


Le Sang et Le Vin

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume II [4]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampires, Blasphemy, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 08:59:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 73,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4558620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athos, Porthos, and Aramis serve King and Country.  A young Gascon arrives on the scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Gascon

**Author's Note:**

> All of d'Artagnan's dialogue is lifted directly from Dumas himself. It really does not get more canonical than this.

**Paris, April 1625**

I lay in Aramis’ arms, with his lips drawn tightly around my jugular, feeling his fangs resting over the skin of my neck where they had rendered two perfectly symmetrical wounds from which my life force flowed into him. I was sheathed inside him, riding the very crest of my desire, not wanting to spill out into him. When I finished, it would be over, and he would leave, scurrying off to his small house on rue de Vaugirard.

I did not want him to leave.

I did not want him to leave, yet it was by my own doing that we had been living in Paris apart. It was by my own bidding that he quit sharing my bed, except for those brief moments, seemingly too brief now, and far too spaced out, when we were joined together in passion.

I thought that once I was reunited with him, the nightmares would cease, that I would regain my balance again. No longer adrift, but tethered now to him. Anchored. _No._ To hell with marine metaphors! The Rohan nymph had done the unthinkable: had robbed me of my love for the sea even after the sea itself had failed to do so.

No, no, it wasn’t her fault. How could I blame her? She had saved him. She must’ve loved him as surely as I did. Anything to the contrary would be beyond comprehension. She had found him upon the Aegean shore and she had loved him. She had taken nothing from me willingly. Not like… not when…

When I slept, rocked into a sense of security by the viselike grip of his arms around me, sometimes I dreamed of all of it again. The flash of the Ottoman dagger, the dark waters of the Aegean, Aramis’ cold lips pressed against mine in the deathlike oceanic void. And then the pain of being torn asunder before being torn to shreds. I still woke up screaming, only now he was with me, to comfort me, to press warm kisses into my temples, to rub his forehead into the back of my neck like a feline sphynx, mysterious and eternal, but still _mine_.

But one night, after too much wine, and perhaps not enough faith in the threads that bound us together, the dark visions of my nightmares changed. I saw the dagger again, but this time in my own hand. I heard Grimaud’s voice, telling me “The ocean’s still knocking around in your brain,” as he did in the moments when he wanted to particularly enrage me. “You should kill him, you know,” my familiar’s voice said, but I recognized it for what it was, for Grimaud would never dare. Hera’s tricks again. Then chains wrapped around my arms, as long ago on Rhodes, and I struggled against them, panic rising up in my chest as bile rose up to my throat. “He had betrayed you,” I was taunted anew with Eris’ voice. “He is the deathbringer. Demonic creature of darkness. Demons are to be slayed.” I shut my eyes and refused to heed her, to heed _them_ , the Eumenides, but water rose up all around me, threatening to swallow me whole again. “Kill him, Athos, kill him.” Out of the depths and all around my bed, the gigantic tentacles of the monster were poised to strike again.

“Athos! Let go.”

My eyes flew open, focusing with frenzied confusion on Aramis’ face. His fingers were clenched around my wrists. In my right hand, I saw a clasped dagger. I gasped, letting the weapon fall from my hand to the pillow, shoved him off me with a single shrug and lept out of our bed. But I had nowhere to go, so I just sank, defeated, to the floorboards.

My body still shook from the dream, from the horror of what I had almost done. I clasped my hands over my eyes, too overcome with shame, unable to look at him, unable to look upon myself. I felt his arms, snaking around me, not like marine tentacles of destruction, but a cocoon of protection that he wanted to weave around me. I could feel him constructing a fortress around me with his mind, the walls and the moat, made of his own flesh and bones. I ached with love for him, and with hatred for myself for coming so close to doing him permanent harm.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Je t’aime,” he had said. At least he had used the informal ‘tu’ with me when we were alone. I might have suffocated beneath the weight of that formal ‘vous’ to which we had to resort in public. “I love you.” These words breathed, softly but surely, like a mantra into the back of my neck, while he mouthed at each vertebra and kissed my inflamed skin.

I knew then that this would have to be the last night I let myself drift off to sleep in his arms, and he in mine. My embrace used to be the one place in the world where Aramis felt safe enough to dream. Now, it seemed, the spectre of death lay there instead, furtively waiting to strike with the dagger of betrayal. The walls had crumbled, the moat had been filled in, the draw bridges smashed to smithereens. Grimaud had been right: my mind was still full of the ocean. I still drowned in it, and I threatened to pull him beneath the waves with me.

The air in my apartment on rue Férou shifted, the cloud lifting off my mind, bringing me back to the present moment. Aramis lay entwined around me, his lips brushed along my earlobe.

“I want to stay tonight,” he whispered, his fingers still clawing at the back of my shoulder blade. My heart clenched. It’s been a long time since he’d attempted to ask that.

“You know you can’t,” I replied.

“You seem better lately,” he said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself of that imaginary fact more so than me. “And I don’t have to sleep.”

I pulled myself up on my elbows and gazed down at him, wondering not for the first time that night why he even bothered with me anymore. After so many centuries, I was not fool enough to think it was only my demi-divine blood he’d been after. Besides, he could have had the nymph for that. He had her for the other things.

I wasn’t always walking through a wine-induced post-oceanic fog. Sometimes I was lucid.

“ _I_ can’t,” I said.

“Why do you insist on denying yourself the comfort we can bring each other?” he asked, brows furrowing, his features forming into the mask he wore so well when he strived to appear withdrawn.

“You’re free to seek comfort elsewhere.”

I understood very well the weight of my words and the state into which they would render him. He pushed me away and dressed himself in silence. My mind felt filled with sand as if someone had taken the hourglass and tipped it over into my brain.

“You know, whatever it is that you think you deserve, I wish you’d leave me out of it,” he snapped, his tunic sideways, his hat shoved ferociously over his brow. “I’m not your flagrum! The gods did not send me here to punish you. If you no longer want me in your life, just tell me and I’ll leave!”

“I’m not the one holding you to me!” My mind became completely inflamed and the joints in my body swole and creaked as if suddenly feeling the weight of three thousand years upon them. “I didn’t even go looking for you! _You_ found _me_ in the Loire Valley!”

“And I should have left you there!”

“You probably should have!”

My heart beat wildly inside my chest. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Grimaud, his eyes darting to and fro, as if trying to pick the winning side to back. He quickly scampered out the door once my gaze fixed on his.

“Don’t do this! I love you!” It felt as if we had both shouted it at the same time, so great was my confusion. Before he could make another step in either direction, I was upon him and he crumbled in my arms and I his.

“I’m sorry,” I kissed into his throat.

“Why do you strive to drive me insane?” he moaned.

“Because I am insane myself,” I sighed into his skin and he did not contradict me. Instead, he picked me up like a ragdoll off the floor and maneuvered my body back onto the bed. “Aramis, don’t go. I don’t want you to go.”

“Hush,” he breathed against my lips, his body spread out atop my own. The way it felt against my exposed skin, the roughness of his clothes against the inflamed rawness of my flesh, made my head spin.

“I need a drink,” I said, staring up into the ceiling as he slid down my body, lips pressing feverish kisses into my trembling abdomen.

“You need what I tell you you need,” he hissed against the inside of my thigh, his fingers clawing at the muscles of my hips as they rolled open for him.

“Yes,” I sighed, so glad to have him there to command me. Under his benevolent control, in his hand, in his mouth, the sand in my mind settled, I felt calm. The usual apathy and lassitude did not touch me when he did.

He sank lower between my thighs, his fangs brushed against the pulsating vein near my groin, his hands kneaded at the muscles of my ass, holding me fast and close. I was painfully hard again and he had barely touched me.

“You think I’m yours to dismiss as you see fit?” he asked as his tongue traced the throbbing outline of my femoral vein.

“No,” I shook my head side to side against the rumbled sheets that still gave off the heady scent of our coupling. “But I am… I am yours.”

“You are,” he growled into my flesh, fingers pressing into my muscles with bruising force. His teeth broke skin and I cried out in ecstasy. The sand and water in my mind parted and gave way to bliss. I was addicted to him. To _this_.

In my moments of lucidity I knew that the endless cycle of hurting each other so that we could put each other back together again needed to be broken. But I did not know how to rebuild our ruined sand castle. So I settled for the calm that set over my mind when his fangs tore through my flesh.

He was holding my thighs apart with one hand just above my knee, and my muscles shuddered like those of a hunting horse, vibrating just below my skin, as Aramis sucked at the top of my thigh.

I moaned soft words, words of submission, of want, of apology. I was still under his thrall and when he drank from me, I did not think of _her_. She was a woman - safe from the stab of his fangs, guarded by his archaic superstitions, or those peculiarities of the slavic demonic tribe of yore. His other hand traveled along my shaft, caressing the sensitive skin of my scrotum. He had told me many times how much he loved the way I hardened when he drank from me. He’d had other lovers before (and likely since) me who had allowed him the taste of their blood, but none had delighted in it the way I had. But none of those men had been immortal. None of them knew what it meant to move through life alone and without purpose.

His fingers circled my opening, probing gently, entering me, stretching me while he drank from my thigh. He took his time, both drinking and fucking me with his fingers. His fangs and digits sank in and out of me, alternating between bursts of tenderness and enraged force, much like the ebb and flow of our love affair. His hair spilled wildly over my thigh and onto my abdomen. My body from my navel to my thighs burned with the rush of blood that cascaded into my groin and into Aramis' mouth. How long would he be able to keep going like this, keeping me in some kind of suspended limbo, between life and pseudo-death, as he drank from me, and I died and resurrected there before his very eyes? The thought of his power over me was dizzying. At last, when I could take it no more, I begged him for my release and received it, exploding with an overabundance of gratitude into the welcoming heat of his mouth while his fingers still milked me from the inside.

A timid knock on the door brought me to my senses. Aramis pulled me up by the hand and threw my shirt at me, which I proceeded to grudgingly pull over my head.

“Come!” I called out.

“M. Porthos,” Grimaud announced. He had long ago learned to be laconic at best in front of my companions, only allowing himself to give me Olympic gnat lip in private. That curtesy made me beat him with less ardor when I did.

“Friends, I come bearing excellent news!” my Titanic cousin pronounced upon entering the room and sniffing at the air with the nose of a connoisseur. “Ah… did I interrupt another lover’s spat?”

“No,” Aramis and I both denied sheepishly.

“Good.”

“Your excellent news, Porthos?” Aramis smiled in his most charming way.

“I won at dice! An incredible roll! We’re going drinking!”

“Porthos, you are surely the archangel Gabriel himself,” I laughed. “And you make me pregnant with anticipation of being stupendously drunk.”

“When are you _not_?” Aramis hissed at me under his breath. I shot him a look of unrestrained disdain. He, who had just drained liters of my blood, did not have a foot to stand on when it came to preaching of moderation.

I wavered as I got up and pulled my boots on one leg at a time. “Bite me, Aramis,” I scowled at him. “Oh wait. You just did.”

When the cardinal’s guards attacked us that night, I did not even have time to get my sword out of the scabbard, so much were my exsanguinated veins replaced with wine. The last thing I remembered before I fainted in the street was the figure of Grimaud looming over me, shaking his head with Olympian disapproval.

***

“This fashion is coming in. It is a folly, I admit, but still it is the fashion. Besides, one must lay out one's inheritance somehow.” Porthos twirled his moustache, puffed out his chest and stomped his heel on the floorboards until sparks flew from under his silver spurs. He looked so much the cockerel that I expected him to emit a shrill crow any minute now. The discussion soon took a turn from fashion to love – or to what in Parisian circles passed for love. Porthos had taken to the established protocol like a fish to water. “You mean I get to have a mistress whom I don’t have to marry and who gives me money, rather than the other way round?” he had boomed happily on learning how one conducted affaires de cœur. “Why did we not come to Paris long ago?”

“Forgive me, but you seemed quite happy with your merry widow in Languedoc,” I had pointed out.

“There are widows in Paris,” Porthos had said, and that was that.

We were now stood in the antechamber of M. de Treville, where we had been summoned for an audience. Porthos was in good cheer, but my own heart was full of gloomy premonitions. M. de Treville did not desire an idle chat with us, that much was certain.

It was only Porthos and me that morning, for Athos was still in bed, recovering from the blood loss which had been partly (and I confess: for the most part) my fault. After Grimaud had brought him home, white like snow and barely breathing, we had dressed the wound that M. le cardinal’s guard had inflicted. The blade had gone through his shoulder and reached his chest, and oh, I had seen him stagger back, seen the grimace of pain that contorted his features, seen him draw his own sword and parry clumsily.

The mere memory of that dreadful moment rendered me pale and trembling with rage. I pinched my own ear and bit my lip to force some colour to my face. But it was no use; my enraged blood boiled in my guts and my loins, while my head and heart were icy. _My_ blood? No, _his_ blood. It was his blood that pumped through my veins still. Blood of which he stood in so much greater need than I did, and there was nothing I could do. Had I been able to return it to him, I would have sliced my veins open with my own poignard. I held my hands aloft, for the sensations of my veins swelling with his life essence while he languished in his bed was disgusting to me.

Porthos, unaware of my musings – or if I wanted to be charitable: intent on taking my mind off them – contrived at last to drag me into the conversation about the latest cabals and intrigues. Worried that he might get carried away on the wave of his own eloquence and disclose too much, I attempted to warn him off the subject by dropping the name of Buckingham à propos of nothing. This coup, however, had the opposite effect. All of a sudden, I found myself reprimanded by _Porthos_ , of all people, for speaking too boldly and for expressing sentiments that were too indelicate and ungentlemanly. My patience, already stretched beyond endurance, snapped. “Are you going to give me a lesson, Porthos?” I exclaimed, more than half-prepared to draw my sword against my most faithful companion.

“My dear fellow,” Porthos said, in his most patronising tone, which I knew he’d picked up from Athos, “Be a musketeer or an abbé. Be one or the other, but not both.”

I ground my teeth in frustration, for ever since I had first spoken of joining the Jesuits to benefit from the spider web of knowledge and power that they had established across Europe and overseas, I'd never heard the end of it. Porthos thought it was an excellent joke. “You know what Athos told you the other day,” Porthos continued, invoking the name of my lover with a sly smirk. “You sup from all troughs. Ah, don't be angry, I beg of you, that would be useless. You know what is agreed upon between you, Athos and me. You go to Madame d'Aguillon’s, and you pay your court to her; you go to Madame de Bois-Tracy's, the cousin of Madame de Chevreuse, and you pass for being far advanced in the good graces of that lady. Oh, good Lord! Don't trouble yourself to reveal your good luck! No one asks for your secret – all the world knows your discretion. But since you possess that virtue, why the devil don’t you make use of it with respect to her Majesty? Let whoever likes talk of the king and the cardinal, and how he likes. But the queen is sacred, and if anyone speaks of her, let it be respectfully.”

That was a long speech, and one which Porthos should have held in the privacy of his rooms. The fact that he treated me to the sermon before the eyes and ears of our friends (and some sort of swarthy kid in provincial attire who stared at us much too blatantly and clearly needed a lesson in manners) showed how worried he was and how bad things had become. Porthos’ patience, it appeared, was wearing thin as well. This realisation did nothing to appease me and to quieten my blood.

“Porthos, you are as vain as Narcissus, I plainly tell you so,” I said coldly. “You know I hate moralising, except when it is done by Athos. As to you, _good sir_ , you wear too magnificent a baldric to be strong on that head. I will be an abbé if it suits me. In the meanwhile I am a musketeer. In that quality I say what I please, and at this moment it pleases me to say that you annoy me.”

He had not expected that. “Aramis!” he exclaimed, scandalised.

“Porthos!” I replied in the same tone, mocking him. Poor, dear Porthos, he did not deserve my raillery, and for a moment, he looked hurt. But no-one noticed but myself. Our friends felt called upon to prevent bloodshed, for shouts of “gentlemen! gentlemen!” sounded in the throng surrounding us both.

Fortunately, M. de Treville’s servant chose that moment to call us inside.

M. de Treville had been a man to whom Athos, Porthos and I had attached ourselves easily. According to Athos, who had lived for three thousand years and knew how to survive without attracting too much attention, the secret of a long happy existence was to submit oneself to a human of considerable standing. “Don’t ever attempt to become a leader or a king,” Athos had once told me. “Leaders and kings are conspicuous. They are obvious targets. No, what you have to do is find a man – or a dynasty – destined for greatness. You serve them as their faithful lieutenant. You make yourself useful, but not indispensable. They must be aware of your potential, but never get the full benefit of your skills. This is how you reap the benefit of their patronage, without being too much inconvenienced - or becoming too much of an inconvenience.”

Athos, Porthos and I had been members of the light cavalry when Louis XIII made an addition to the Maison de Roi in 1622: he established the mousquetaires de la garde by equipping our company with muskets. Serving under M. de Treville, we had thus found ourselves enrolled as members of the royal guard that was responsible for the monarch’s safety outside the royal residences. I couldn’t resist pointing out to Athos that fate had guided our steps, for the royal guards had originally been Marie’s suggestion for my career. He, alas, had not found it amusing.

Having served under his command for several years, I had the fondest regard for the captain. For Athos, who had an excellent eye for personages who made outstanding leaders of men, respected him with all his heart. Yet I admit, when he talked to us on that day as if we were wayward schoolboys, I had half a mind to drop all pretences and drain him of blood then and there. My desire to tear through a throat was exacerbated due to the scene being witnessed by the swarthy kid whom I had spotted in the antechamber. Far be it from me to blame Porthos for what followed, but I believe that his cavalier fib, with which he sought to excuse Athos’ absence, made things worse. “Ill,” Porthos had replied when the captain demanded to know the reason for Athos’ absence. “Smallpox, it is feared.”

Treville was no fool. No wonder he did not believe such barefaced lies. “ _Damned musketeers… daredevils… braggarts… morbleu!_ ” the expletive torrent seemed endless, and I saw Porthos stamp his feet and bite his lips until blood came, his hand clenched tightly around the hilt of the sword. For my part, my arm and my fangs were ready to strike. But I reined them in, mindful of Athos’ wishes, and began to reason with the captain instead.

The shouting and abuses subsided only after I assured M. de Treville that I had killed one of the cardinal’s guards with his own sword. “Killed him, or poniarded him, sir, as is most agreeable to you,” I added with a courtly bow. I did not tell him that I had dragged the man behind an upset table and sampled the vintage (it had been an inferior one).

Things calmed down considerably after my words. “I did not know that,” replied M. de Treville, in a somewhat softened tone. “The cardinal’s report was exaggerated, as I perceive.”

I saw my chance and I took it. “But pray, sir, do not say that Athos is wounded.” For I knew my godling’s pride, and he would not appreciate if it became known that he'd permitted himself to be injured in a brawl. “He would be in despair if that should come to the ears of the king. And as the wound is very serious, seeing that after crossing the shoulder it penetrated into the chest, it is to be feared-” My voice faltered not. But at this instant, the tapestry was raised and Athos’ face appeared, white as a sheet. (Though perhaps not one of Athos’ sheets, for I have to admit that their pristine white had long made way to reddish-brown stains.)

“Athos!” Porthos and I exclaimed in one voice.

“Athos!” repeated M. de Treville.

“You have sent for me, sir.” Oh, I could have gladly throttled him, the obstinate ass. Grimaud had dressed him immaculately, polished his boots and belted him tightly, and his face, though white like death, was shaved according to the latest fashion. My blood churned again at the sight of his deliberate step, his rigid posture. I barely listened to the pleasantries exchanged, watching Athos’ face closely. I saw the grimace of pain when M. de Treville clasped his hand. Saw him rally and pull himself up to his full height when curious faces peeked through the open door. Saw at last his mouth go slack and his eyes mist over with pain. I was by his side in a flash, but he had collapsed to the floor before I reached him.

“A surgeon!” cried M. de Treville. “Mine! The king’s! The best!”

Everyone was there all of a sudden, surrounding us in a throng of pushing and pulling bodies. Porthos shoved one or two of the men away who had almost stepped on Athos as he lay senseless on the floorboards. I had sunk down next to him, cradling him in my arms, ignoring the commotion around us, for I knew that I could rely on M. de Treville to get the best surgeon for Athos. Porthos, after making sure that the onlookers knew their place, had knelt down next to me and was shielding Athos from view with his body and his cloak. By the time the surgeon appeared, Athos had opened his eyes and sent an imitation of a smile my way. I did not reciprocate, for I feared that my fangs might have flashed, rendering my smile a snarl. Instead, I touched his wrist and passed my thumb over his pulse point. M. de Treville’s hand as he pointed the way to us. Porthos gathering Athos in his arms to carry him away. My own fingers still wrapped around his wrist, feeling for the faint throb that would tell me all was well, he was alive, I had not killed him with my carelessness. The surgeon followed us, the door closed, I heaved a sigh. Athos raised his eyes to mine and smiled.

What can I tell you about the hours that followed? Athos’ wounds getting dressed (“he lost a lot of blood,” as the surgeon’s professional opinion went, which I admired from the bottom of my heart). Porthos and I loitering about, waiting for the surgeon to leave and for Athos to rejoin us. The Gascon nuisance, the duel under the midday sun, the triumph over the cardinal’s guards.

The procession back. We walked arm in arm, occupying the whole width of the street and taking in every musketeer we met, so that in the end it became a triumphal march. The Gascon kid was skipping to keep pace with Porthos and Athos, between whom he walked, clinging to both their arms like a monkey. “If I am not yet a musketeer,” he exclaimed as we passed through the gateway of M. de Treville’s hôtel, “At least I have entered upon my apprenticeship, haven't I?”

I shot a sidelong glance at Athos, who walked by my side, pressing up against me with the easy familiarity that bound us together. Athos returned my gaze with a stony one of his own. “Don’t eat the kid,” he mouthed at me, before turning his attention back to the little Gascon, who, with his height of barely five feet, all but disappeared between Athos and the gigantic Porthos. I rolled my eyes and carried the flagon of wine to my lips that a comrade had pushed into my hand.

“Gentlemen!” the Gascon’s voice cracked with excitement. “Gentlemen!” I could tell he was pressing Athos and Porthos tenderly as he spoke. “Permit me to tell you how incredibly happy I am that I have met you. This is all and more that I could have wished for.”

I saw Athos smile as he listened to the kid’s effusions. Porthos was laughing in his good-natured way. I made sure to walk a step behind Athos so that the kid didn’t see my face. But he proved too cunning to fall for my trick.

“M. Aramis!” he ejaculated warmly, peeking around Athos and reaching out to clasp my hand. “I have to tell you… M. Aramis, when I first saw you – even before we spoke – I was determined to model myself after you, for you are mildness and grace personified.”

I saw Athos bite his lower lip and could not help a blush heating up my face. Athos was shaking with suppressed laughter, I could feel it in the way his arm trembled against mine. And the Gascon was far from finished. “And when I first saw you and M. Porthos together, conversing lively in M. de Treville’s antechamber – so noble and elegant.” He looked from me to Porthos and back again. “Why, I thought you two demigods!”

Porthos burst out laughing. From the corner of my eye, I saw Athos smile through pain and paleness.

“Us two? Demigods?” I said, looking the Gascon in the eye and ignoring the way Athos’ arm shook against mine. “Porthos and myself? I assure you, my _dear_ d’Artagnan, nothing could be further from the truth.”

***

Upon my windowsill, a hyacinth bulb burst into violent bloom. I had no idea where Aramis had found the plant in France (although I could venture a guess and that guess would involve his go-to for obtaining all things of value or rarity - the Rohan nymph), but I appreciated the gesture. Guilt must have been eating him up to go out of his way like that. I imagined him explaining to her why he needed that precise flower. I stuck my finger into the soil, stroking over the tumescent bulb. Like so many other seemingly harmless Mediterranean herbs, the bulb of the hyacinth held poison. Such was the will of Apollo, I supposed.

The door slammed behind me. The bells of Saint-Sulpice had just sounded midnight and I did not need to turn around to know whom I would find standing in my bedroom.

Next to the flower, on the windowsill, sat the young Gascon’s balm. I quickly took it into my hand and positioned my body so that my nightly visitor could see what I was holding.

“It’s probably poison, you know,” Aramis sniped.

“Like the bulb of the hyacinth flower,” I murmured.

“You don’t need it, anyways. You’ll heal soon enough on your own.” He took a step towards me, taking the container out of my hand with disdain. “Won’t you?” His voice was tinged with just the barest amount of genuine concern.

I shrugged. Grimaud had chided me the other day for not taking better care of myself. My regenerative powers appeared to not be quite up to snuff lately. He blamed it on my repose under the sea; I blamed it on overindulgence. I suppose we may have both been right. The wound in my shoulder was at least healing, even if the wound in my mind was not.

“What was all that about? That kid you brought home with us today. We did not need another parrot!”

“D’Artagnan?”

“Yes, d’Artagnan. How many pets did you pick up today?”

I grinned, showing him my teeth. At first I did think the Gascon was a bit of a frenzied bichon-frise, not that I would admit that now. “He seemed more like a dog than a parrot to me,” I finally said. “Dogs are loyal.”

“Yes, and they hump your leg and piss all over your shoes.” I smiled, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. “And he’s young, probably not house broken.”

“He does rather lack in comportment,” I gave him that much. “It’s as if he was raised entirely in the wilderness, with no one to teach him the proper ways of manhood.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’ve decided that’s to be your job?”

“Aramis,” I shook my head, my eyes falling onto the bright violet bloom in my window. “You’re jealous.”

“I am merely remarking that he is very young. And not your responsibility.”

“He could be.”

“You’re _trying_ to enrage me on purpose! We do not take in strays!”

“Porthos likes him,” I sat down and reached under the bed, where a bottle of my last Anjou languished awaiting to empty down my gullet.

“Porthos likes _everyone_.”

“Porthos likes you.”

He opened his mouth and closed it again, repeating the gesture with his fists. At last he tore off his hat and tossed it onto the armchair. It appeared he wasn’t about to turn on his heels and leave quite yet.

He took a step towards me like a cautious cat. “D’Artagnan is short.”

“He is not tall.” I bit my lip to keep myself from laughing.

“He can barely grow facial hair.”

“You already pointed out how young he is.”

“You like that, don’t you? It’s the Ancient Greco-Deviant in you. Can never quite walk the line between paideia and paedophilia. Besides, he probably has a very small cock, and you Greeks like that, huh? It’s your romantic ideal.”

“Have you really only come here to insult me?” I finally asked, refusing to rise to the bait. I was too tired, and in too much pain still to have another one of our epic blow-outs. I uncorked the bottle and poured the sweet nectar out into a cup.

“No,” he stood before me and took the cup out of my hand, bringing it to his own lips the way he used to do in the early days of our courtship. My heart clenched painfully inside my chest. “I came because you’re a mess and I was worried about you.”

“I am well enough,” I replied, taking the wine back and tossing it back down my throat. I was peeved to hear him speak this way. If I was a mess lately it was because he had rendered me so. Though I was certainly above reminding him of it.

“You were in no shape to fight a duel today, and I’m still not sure about this tennis with Porthos that you think you’re up for tomorrow.”

“I have had enough of Grimaud clucking like a mother hen over me for the past two days. I do not need the same from you.”

“Damn it, Athos, will you just allow me to give a damn for once!” he exploded. My hand trembled, almost letting the cup fall to the floor. He had caught it and placed it gently on the windowsill, next to the hyacinth. “I’m sorry… I… did not mean to shout.”

“He’s not a threat to you, Aramis,” I raised my eyes to his. “No one is a threat to you.”

He fell to his knees before me, burying his face in my neck. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him closer into the recesses of my body. “It’s alright,” I whispered into his hair. “I’m alright.” I felt him taking a labored breath and then his lips traveled lightly over my jugular where he had drank from me only the other night. “We’re alright,” I added, this time speaking more to myself than to him.

***

It was nigh three o’clock in the morning when Aramis tumbled into my house, allowed in by my faithful Mousqueton (whether consciously or not, it mattered not). By the wild look about his face, I could only surmise he had just come from paying a visit to Athos. I groused and harrumphed, my entire body creaking with effort as I pulled myself up on my pillows.

“You know I’m not up to your levels of philosophizing at this hour of night,” I rubbed my eyes and blinked at him through the veil of darkness.

He walked to the corner of my bedroom, where I kept my most precious possessions from the shores of my birth, and unveiled the ball of sunshine I kept hidden behind my stacks of maps, globes, and other maritime souvenirs (including, incidentally, the perfect foot-long replica of the Grilled Octopus). Light filled the room and my friend shielded his eyes against it.

“Better now?”

“Much.” I stretched and got out of bed, feeling immediately peckish. Aramis seemed a little worse for wear himself, his eyes darted to and fro nervously and his fingers curled up like claws attempting to grasp at prey. “Did you two fight again?” I furrowed my brow.

“It’s the Gascon,” Aramis sighed, plopping into the chair. “Do you enjoy his company as much as Athos seems to?”

“He is… amusing,” I offered. In truth, the night we’d spend in ribald revelry with the young human upstart had been the happiest I’d seen Athos in years, so Aramis’ little tantrum wasn’t at all surprising. “He’s got the whole hero-worship thing going on, too. Which, to be honest, I’m not entirely opposed to.” Aramis bit his lips and they flushed with blood not his own.

“Since when do we take in human pets?”

“Since they might prove useful in rehabilitating our friends?” I rose and placed one hand over his shoulder, as if to ground him in reality. “Think about it. Athos could really use a hobby.”

“Killing people is his hobby,” Aramis snapped.

“That’s not his hobby, that’s his vocation. Like you profess the church to be yours, remember?”

“Then, I suppose, it must be drinking.”

“Don’t you think a pet human would be more diverting?”

“That’s the problem with you two,” Aramis rose, his cheeks flushing. “You Greek demigods think all of humanity is your playground, and men and women are just pawns placed on the board for your amusement.”

“And your dinner?”

“Touché.” He sat back down and crossed his arms.

“He’s not been the same since he…” I didn’t want to say it. What could I say? Was eaten by a giant tentacled sea monster? “You know.”

“I know. _Trust me_ , I know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Besides, maybe this d’Artagnan will get himself killed soon and then you won’t have to be so put out by his existence.”

“With his penchant for picking the wrong battles? Should be dead within a week.”

“Right.”

“Right then.”

Our plan to wait for d’Artagnan to get himself killed seemed to be going swimmingly the next day as well. In fact, I nearly killed him myself with a single tennis serve. Except, strangely, he survived that following skirmish as well, somehow managing to cover himself (and - by extension - us) with victory laurels.

“Surely, the kid has a charmed life,” Aramis sniped, on our way to a rendezvous with our captain. Treville had summoned us in private, no doubt to discuss our involvement with the events the reader is doubtlessly familiar with.

The captain was the one mortal among an endless throng of them whom we did not communally disdain. Athos would never have sunk to reporting to a man he considered truly beneath him, and of course he harbored a strange nostalgia when it came to Gascons (having pretended to be one centuries ago). Unlike most men of his social stature, Treville weighed a man’s worth by his demeanor and deeds, rather than by his familial line or cut of face. In my native waters, I was the son of Helios. Here in France, I was a soldier for whom Athos (under his stolen name and title) had to vouchsafe. I only bore that indignity because of the clout a musketeer’s tunic afforded to the man who wore it. Besides, I did not really care as much as Athos did about whose name I wielded my sword in; the fact that Bourbons claimed some kind of mystical connection to the divinities of Rhodes mattered little to me. Athos and Aramis were my family now and that was sufficient.

All three of us had assumed the captain had summoned us to demand an account of our behavior. I braced myself for an outpouring of “drunken, slovenly, daredevils and braggarts” that was doubtlessly about to burst forth from Treville’s mouth like wine from Athos’ many bottles.

Instead, he checked that the door was closed, fixed us with his hawk-like eye and said, “This d’Artagnan you’re palling around with - how do we know he’s not an agent of the Cardinal?”

We exchanged bewildered looks. Aramis smirked, Athos frowned, I twirled my mustache nervously.

“Sir?” Athos finally spoke. “Our understanding was his father claims some kinship to you.”

“Aye, that he does,” the captain played with his glove. “But, sangdieu, gentlemen! I have not seen his father in decades! How am I to even know this boy is who he claims?”

“The letter of recommendation was stolen, he says,” Aramis added, clearly throbbing with barely tethered glee.

“The timing of his arrival is suspicious,” Athos conceded. “There seems to be a particularly foul stench of intrigue afoot,” his eyes fixed upon Aramis.

“Parbleu!” the captain exclaimed. “Gentlemen, I do not wish to dishonor an ancient friendship of mine upon a mere suspicion.”

“And still, we should be cautious,” Aramis’ even look held the captain’s eye.

“I need you three to keep an eye on him,” Treville said, his finger tracing each one of us in turn. “Watch him closely. Report to me his every move.”

Athos wrinkled his nose and Aramis stepped on his foot before he said something so honorable as to get all three of us summarily fired.

“Not a problem, Captain,” I quickly interjected. “At the first sign of betrayal, we’ll eat him… stab him… with swords. Kill him. He’ll be dead.” Athos and Aramis had both fixed me with one of their twin stares that silently commanded me to shut up. I rolled my eyes at them.

Leaving the captain’s office, Athos leaned against the balustrade and threw up his hands.

“We really just agreed to _spy_ on d’Artagnan?”

“It’s not spying when we’re doing it in the King’s name,” I pointed out. “It’s only spying when the Cardinal’s people do it. When we do it - it’s reconnaissance.”

“Jesus… _fucking_.... Hera’s tits!” Athos exploded.

“Yes, quite,” Aramis scowled, “I can see why the captain likes you best.”

That made us all break out in laughter. Whatever cloud passed over us on that stairwell had dissolved, for the time being, and I was full of joy of mission. Even if it was a mission of reconnaissance.

 


	2. The Buckingham Intrigue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order to enjoy this chapter even more, it can't hurt to remind oneself of Dumas' description of Aramis: _He was a young man of about two or three-and-twenty, with an open, ingenuous countenance, a black, mild eye, and cheeks rosy and downy as an autumn peach. His delicate mustache marked a perfectly straight line upon his upper lip; he appeared to dread to lower his hands lest their veins should swell, and he pinched the tips of his ears from time to time to preserve their delicate pink transparency. Habitually he spoke little and slowly, bowed frequently, laughed without noise, showing his teeth, which were fine and of which, as the rest of his person, he appeared to take great care._

**Paris, July 1625**

Three months had passed since the Gascon had burst into our lives, and I found myself called upon to revise my initial opinion of him. I had thought him boisterous, provincial and uncouth. (And it had amazed me how Athos, lover of all things sophisticated, could stand the bragging and the juvenile flights of fancy that were not backed by any substantial skill. He was a decent swordsman, I suppose, but good swordsmen were common as pox. But he was young and he worshipped Athos, and my godling was never above vanity.)

Now that I knew the Gascon better, I had discovered him to be dangerous.

Not dangerous like a good blade is in a duel. Not dangerous even like a mortar pointed at the ramparts of the citadel one is defending. No, the danger of d’Artagnan was impersonal, unguided and arbitrary, like an avalanche rolling down the mountain slope and dragging everyone to their death. Floundering about as he was – everywhere at once, always nosey, always asking questions, always eavesdropping – and blessed with the devil’s own luck, he hit by accident upon matters that should have remained obscure.

I had not been able to suppress a shudder when his answer to Porthos’ casual question, “Where do you lodge, young man?” had been, “Oh, in the rue des Fossoyeurs, with a citizen called Bonacieux.” The Gascon had not attached any significance to the name, but I had heard it before, and my heart was full of dreadful premonitions. Marie had confided to me the name of the person who acted as the go-between for her Majesty and herself. “In case I should be detained and can’t make it to Paris,” Marie had told me, “you need to know who your contact at the Louvre is.”

Notwithstanding all this, I did no longer believe that d’Artagnan was, as M. de Treville had initially suspected, the cardinal’s spy. “Of course he’s not a spy. The kid is too conspicuous to be a spy,” I had told Athos and Porthos. “A lost letter! A beautiful stranger in a hooded cloak! A mysterious man with a scar! Those are not the stories the cardinal’s spy would tell. And he only notices things that he _wants_ to notice, that makes him a very poor and not at all credible informer.”

“I never thought I’d ever hear you _defend_ him,” Athos had smirked.

“I didn’t realise I was,” I’d shot back.

Porthos harrumphed. “Might be a double-bluff,” he’d said.

By the time d’Artagnan entertained us with the dramatic tale of how his landlady had been abducted by a ruthless villain, whose haughty manner and scarred temple painted him as the henchman of the devil himself, I had resigned myself to the fact that the kid’s desire to prove himself meant that he would dig like a terrier until he found a scrap of a mystery into which he could sink his teeth.

I could not deny, however, that the news had set me on edge. Mme Bonacieux, the reliable messenger at the Louvre, had been abducted. I wondered if Marie knew yet and if something had to be done.

That decision, it seemed, was not mine to make.

“Your affair is not bad,” Athos told the Gascon over the rim of his wine glass. I looked at him in surprise, for it was not like Athos to care for the fate of a mercer’s wife. But he continued calmly: “One may draw fifty or sixty pistoles from this good man. Then there only remains to ascertain whether these fifty or sixty pistoles are worth the risk of four heads.”

“But observe,” cried d'Artagnan, “that there is a _woman_ in the affair! A woman carried off! A woman who is doubtless threatened, tortured perhaps! And all because she is faithful to her mistress.”

He was talking himself into a passion, and I considered it my duty as a man of the robe to rein him in. “ You grow a little too warm, in my opinion, about the fate of Madame Bonacieux. Woman was created for our destruction, and it is from her we inherit all our miseries.”

I glanced at Athos as I delivered the strike and noticed that shadow that passed over his brow. He bit his lips, but didn’t parry.

The longer the Gascon talked, the more I was determined to ignore Athos’ request and drink the kid dry at a convenient moment. He had taken it into his head that the First Minister of France was some sort of man-eating ogre who would stop at nothing and whose evil dungeons were brimming over with fair maidens whom he subjected to the most exquisite tortures. D’Artagnan had no grasp of the subtleties of cabals and intrigues.

Some of my thoughts must have manifested themselves in my face, for Athos caught my eye. I sighed. The Gascon would live.

And then, the kid said something that made me think that not only should he live, he might also be rendered useful. One thing was indisputable: d’Artagnan was full of energy and invention. What he lacked in subtlety, he made up in vigour and pig-headed determination, which carried him towards a goal without looking left or right.

“If I knew where the Duke of Buckingham was, nothing would prevent me from taking him by the hand and conducting him to the queen, were it only to enrage the cardinal,” he exclaimed. I looked at him, thinking, weighing, and gambled it all.

“Wait a minute, then,” I said.

“What for?” demanded Porthos.

“Go on, while I endeavour to recall circumstances.” I wasn’t convinced that it was the right thing to do. But if I didn’t want him running around like a headless cock, I had to bridle those haphazard energies.

“And now I am convinced,” continued d’Artagnan, unstoppable like a herd of cows on a rampage, “that this abduction of the queen’s woman is connected with the events of which we are speaking, and perhaps with the presence of Buckingham in Paris.”

"The Gascon is full of ideas," said Porthos with admiration.

“I like to hear him talk,” said Athos. “His dialect amuses me.”

A smile almost escaped me, but I caught it just in time. “Gentlemen!” I exclaimed instead. I had made up my mind. “Listen to this: yesterday I was at the house of a doctor of theology, whom I sometimes consult about my studies.”

Athos smiled.

This is how I told my friends that the Duke of Buckingham was in Paris. I deemed it better to disclose part of the secret – especially the part that was already known or suspected – than have d’Artagnan come blundering in when he attempted to unearth the mystery that was none of his business. For a moment, I could see why Athos found him so entertaining, for the youthful exuberance that led him to believe he was in charge of a secret mission was amusing to watch. “That’s well! Now let us everyone retire to his own home,” said d’Artagnan, as if he had done nothing but command all his life. “And attention! For from this moment we are at feud with the cardinal.”

Thus dismissed, we left the lodgings of our new general.

We did not laugh until we had gained the street.

On the whole, however, the affair was no laughing matter. Mme Bonacieux had disappeared, and we needed her assistance to gain access to the Louvre at midnight. It was as vexatious as it was ironic that a seamstress was of more use to us in that instance than a duchess. 

That was what I told Marie, who reclined against my chest, calm and unruffled as ever. (Well, no, quite ruffled actually, for her artfully arranged coiffure was in disarray and several ribbons of her bodice had not survived the evening’s frivolities.)

“Marie Michon is a seamstress,” she said, toying with a lock of my hair. “Perhaps she should attempt-”

“Don’t you dare!” I lifted her hand and kissed it. “You’ve already risked too much by leaving your exile to come to Paris. Is it really worth it? Just so Buckingham can have a half-hour interview with the queen? Nothing will ever come of it. Unless an heir to the French throne will be miraculously born in nine months’ time. In which case I shall take everything back.”

“It’s _romantic_ ,” Marie sighed and trailed the feathers of her fan over my chest. I shook my head, laughing, for I did not for one moment believe that romance was the driving force behind her schemes.

“Marie…”

“It vexes certain people whom I wish to see vexed.”

“That, I can believe.” I kissed her hand again. “It can’t hurt that the Duke of Buckingham is a useful ally. And the most handsome man.”

“He resembles you a great deal.”

I merely smiled, for my resemblance to His Grace was instrumental for the plan to work.

“You know I can get him past the guard and into the Louvre,” I said to Marie – quite unnecessarily, for she was aware of my ability to get in wherever I pleased. “But I cannot conduct him to the queen’s chambers. Even if I disguised myself as one of her women – which would be a very poor performance indeed – I don’t know the way.”

“Oh, I’m not sure about that. I think you would make a most admirable lady,” Marie said. “Your waist would look delectable in a bodice.”

“And you would make the most admirable cavalier, my wily nymph, but do not change the subject,” I chastised her. “How do you intend to convey our love-struck Englishman to his lady?”

“I’m sure something will come up.” She yawned a kittyish little yawn and rolled into my arms. “Something always does.”

Her white breasts pressed into my chest and I craned my neck and kissed the plump flesh spilling over her bodice.

“I can’t believe you declared me a seamstress,” she whispered, and dug her fingers into my shoulders.

“I can’t believe you declared me a linen draper,” I replied, and tightened my grip around her waist.

A commotion behind the door, at this most inopportune moment. Voices, hushed at first, then louder. Bazin was talking to someone in agitated tones. The front door slammed, footsteps in the hall, a knock at the door.

I sighed and Marie rolled off me and pulled the bed hangings closed.

“What is it!” I called. “Bazin, you animal, do the words ‘do not disturb’ mean nothing to you?”

“My apologies, Monsieur,” my valet had opened the door a fraction and was speaking through the gap. “That was Planchet. M. d’Artagnan requests you to take arms and come, nay, run to him.”

“Oh, _does_ M. d’Artagnan?” I said, falling back into the pillows. “Well, well, how very curious. What did you say?”

“I told Planchet you’re not at home, Monsieur.”

“Good. I am not at home. What did he say?”

“He said the life of a woman was in danger. He said something about an abduction, a miraculous escape and return. I did not understand everything, for I don’t know what he was referring to.”

“Good. You don’t know. Now go.”

Marie’s arm snaked around my middle and her fingers grazed lightly over the bulge between my legs. “I told you something would come up,” she breathed in my ear.

“Don’t tempt me, devious seductress.” I reached across for my shirt and began to dress myself. “The whole scheme was your idea. Now I will have to leave and stay away for the rest of the evening, lest M. d’Artagnan shall get it into his head to pay me a visit and entreat me to go running, sword in hand, through the streets of Paris.”

“Bazin can keep him out.”

“You’ve obviously never met M. d’Artagnan.”

“Ah!” she exclaimed, flinging herself into the pillows in a dramatic swoon. “How I wish my faithful La Lunaire were here! She would keep out any hot-blooded youth without leaving her easy chair.”

“She didn’t keep me out.”

“You’re not a youth.”

“Touché.” I stood and turned to her. “How do I look?”

“Devout.” Marie wrinkled her nose and looked my black robe up and down. “I’ve always had a fancy for a priest…” she said pensively.

“I will send you word the moment I’ve taken my vows.” I bowed to her and picked up my folio and the bundle containing my uniform. “I will deposit the uniform for M. le duc Buckingham in the rue de la Harpe.”

“Good.”

“On my way there, I will attempt to ascertain what M. d’Artagnan wanted me for.”

“What? Without your _arms_?”

“I’m not going to enter his house.”

“Shall you watch his dwelling from the shadows, my crafty créature de la nuit?”

“I shall.”

“And then?”

“And then, I am going to spend an instructive evening in the company of learnèd and most respectable men of the church, who, if interrogated by the commissary, will confirm that I had dedicated myself to my studies of theology most diligently until the midnight hour.”

“Good. Now come here and kiss me adieu, M. l'abbé, for the sight of you so studious and pious sets my heart aflutter and my loins aflame.”

I threw myself into her arms and her lips parted beneath mine. “You’re poking me,” she whispered into the kiss.

“My apologies,” I murmured, kissing the edge of her jaw. “Can’t be helped.”

“Is that a poignard?”

“You don’t think I’m going to leave the house unarmed?”

“No, alas! Times are uncertain.” She sat up and pushed me away. “Go now, Aramis. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“What will you do to while away the time?”

She laughed. “Read your poems, chéri.”

***

Aramis had asked for five days leave to go to Rouen. I had learned this from captain de Treville, who, ever solicitous of my health and well-being, had invited me to sup with him in the company of Messieurs le duc de la Trémouille and le comte de Châlus. The captain, may the gods bless his southern heart and hospitality, was asking me whether all was well with my dear friend, since he had asked leave to look after some family affairs.

“I am not privy to Aramis’ family matters, _mon capitain_ ,” I replied, trying to keep the terseness out of my voice to the extent my shattered nerves allowed me. “But rest assured, I have never met a man more capable of arranging his affairs than Aramis. He will return when he says and ready to serve the King.”

I had held de Treville in high esteem since the day he allowed me to shed my assumed name for my real name without so much as batting an eyelash.

“I have reasons to wish that it be known le comte de La Fère is dead,” I had said and he had asked me only what I would like to be called from that day forth before signing my commission. At that point I had given him my real name. Aramis had his own ways of getting people to do his bidding, whereas I had to rely on mostly telling them the truth. In all honesty, sometimes I did wonder that it had always worked as well as it did. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

The captain’s company had been pleasing to me, but not pleasing enough to dispel the dark thoughts that gathered when I heard of Aramis’ little impending vacation. Only yesterday, I could have sworn I had seen a carriage with arms of the House of Rohan loitering outside his residence at 25 rue de Vaugirard. And earlier today, a messenger from Madame d’Aiguillon in her husband the duke’s livery. Subtlety apparently was not the forte of his mistresses.

The captain’s hôtel was only a few steps away from my abode, just across Place Saint-Sulpice, but I had desired some air rather than returning to my empty place of residence. The night was still relatively young, and I wasn’t going to receive any visitors at midnight, since they were dispatched elsewhere. _Family matters_ , Hades’ balls! I had walked past Saint-Sulpice, heading in the direction of Pont Saint-Michel. As soon as I beheld the Seine from the quai, I stopped and leaned over the railing, looking into the dark waters with glazed over eyes.

“Nymph, in thy orisons be all _my_ sins remembered,” I spoke the Bard’s words into the abyss. More and more lately, Grimaud had threatened to toss me into the Seine, claiming “Another century of sleep would be preferable to watching you wallow.”

The water sprites did not show their faces to me.

Having remembered the Bard, my thoughts inadvertently turned towards poor Olivier de La Fère. Perhaps I had judged him too harshly. Perhaps I would not have cut down every tree in the forest after all, but would have left one sturdy one upon which to hang my beloved, and watch him dangle from a great height.

“Thinking of Ophelia again, Kyrios?” I heard the impish Grigori behind me. “Would you like me to give you a little push?”

“What do you want, pest?”

“I’ve come to warn your lordship not to return home just now.”

“Why the devil not?”

“Young M. d’Artagnan brought a woman there.”

“What?!” I jumped as if stung by an asp. “Is that fool trying to assassinate me?”

“In truth, I know not, Kyrios. I was returning from my errands,” Grimaud paused to emphasize, “with your _clean linens_.” 

“And?”

“And I saw him, with some hussy in tow. He left her alone at the apartment and had the gall to take the key with him!”

“To what purpose?”

“To the purpose of undoing us all,” he pronounced to great dramatic effect.

“Ah, I see you and Aramis agree on _some_ things, at least.” I snickered and looked back over the railing. Down below, over the susurrating waters, I thought I saw a fish jump. But perhaps it had been a water sprite after all.

“A thousand pardons, Kyrios, but need I remind you that the last time a woman touched your cock, _I died_?”

I fixed Grimaud with a blank stare. Well, lucky him then! Some of us weren’t so fortunate as to seek and find oblivion and peace in the arms of Thanatos.

“Aramis thinks d’Artagnan presumes me to be impotent,” I finally spoke. 

Only the other day, the young Gascon had walked in on us in my bedroom (an oversight for which I did not fail to smack Grimaud upside the head), where Aramis had been busy slamming me against the wall and having himself an afternoon snack from my jugular, his hand working wonders inside my breeches. Upon d’Artagnan’s entry, my lover simply removed his hand and proceeded to pretend to help me get dressed, as my wound was allegedly still bothering me. As I willed my blood to quit my abandoned, engorged cock, I could not believe that the kid bought such a blatant ruse. Sometimes I wondered if he had no eyes at all. Surely, he would’ve made a terrible spy. I even contemplated telling Treville about his obtuseness, but then I realized I would have had to also admit to being caught _in flagrante_ with my comrade in arms. (I missed the days of my youth when you would’ve been frowned upon for _not_ being caught bedding your comrades in arms.) No, it was best to pretend to hold d’Artagnan’s perspicacity in highest esteem.

“I don’t like it,” Grimaud shook his head.

“No one likes it,” I replied. “Well then, scurry off, you bane of my existence. I shall go visit our young Gascon friend and ask him what on earth he had in mind. Doubtlessly, he’s gotten himself involved in something unseemly.”

At this point, as if to somehow spite me by doing so, my familiar had switched to his eloquent gesticulations, many of which were extremely rude and the gist of which indicated to me that he hoped my Father descended from the sky in the guise of an eagle or a perhaps a giant sea gull and destroyed both me and Aramis alike for all the grief he’s had trying to get blood stains out of my sheets lately. 

I kicked him. I would have kicked him a lot harder had he actually said any of that out loud. 

D’Artagnan had taken up residence less than two blocks away from my own (another fact of which Aramis had not approved and found suspicious, although to the best of my knowledge, the Gascon had settled there prior to making our acquaintance). It would be just as easy to stop by his place and see what all the ado had been about with the floozy at my apartment and the mysterious taking of keys.

On the way to rue de Fossoyeurs, I passed by a small cluster of gentlemen, and I use the term loosely, darting either which direction like bloodhounds who had lost their victim’s scent. An inordinate amount of black cloaks were also scattered all over rue de Vaugirard. “Oh Aramis, what have you done now?” I wondered as I walked on.

Not surprisingly, I found the Gascon absent. It appeared all of Paris had lost their minds that night. No sooner had I told his manservant that I had intended to wait upon d’Artagnan to return, being not at all keen to exit back into the frenzied streets, and taken a seat in a chair so uncomfortable as to probably had been used in some Inquisition, that the door was forced and several armed guards stormed in, surrounding me.

I was calculating in my head the probability of slaying all of them without incurring too much suspicion. Then again, I wasn’t exactly in my best Trojan fighting form lately if my inability to recuperate quickly from my wound had been any indication. 

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” I inquired, my sword remaining in its scabbard.

“You are M. d’Artagnan?” one of the guards advanced upon me.

I smiled and replied, “You think so?” Clearly, these men had never seen the Gascon child to presume me for him.

“We are certain of it!” Another guard shouted at me, advancing, sword pointed at my chest.

“Are you here to arrest me?” I asked, feeling my heart speed up in glorious anticipation. This, right here, was the perfect way to vex Aramis to no end. Let him go to his ‘family business’ and I shall go to prison in d’Artagnan’s stead.

“In the Cardinal’s name!”

“Terrific,” I said, taking off my sword. “Gentlemen, I surrender.” 

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Planchet. Of course. It would not do for him to observe my actions without lending some believability to my motives. I held up my finger to let my guards know that I needed a moment to speak with my domestic and whispered into Planchet’s ear. “It’s your master who needs his freedom at the moment, and not me, since he knows everything and I know nothing. They’ll think he’s arrested, and that will give him time. In three days I’ll tell them who I am, and they’ll have to let me go.”

Planchet gazed at me with eyes full of tears and gratitude at my selfless act of sacrifice.

“Gentlemen, I’m at your service,” I said and was seized upon by a dozen of grubby, plebeian hands. As they pushed me outside and guided me towards a black carriage that awaited me, I felt a shiver run down my spine. I turned around, trying to pierce the night’s veil with my gaze. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him out there in the darkness. Watching me.

Flitter away, sweet flittermouse, flitter away.

***

“M. d’Artagnan,” I said, gliding into the shadows on silent wings. “I’m here to hear your confession.”

Behind me, the door slammed shut like a tombstone.

A shape stirred in the dark, turned, rose, and approached. “Whom have we here,” Athos said, materialising before me. “An honest-to-god Jesuit. Good evening, Monsieur l’abbé.”

Athos’ arrest had called for a change of plan. There was nothing I could have done while he was being led away by the guards. I and my uniform were expected in the rue de la Harpe, where Buckingham lodged during his sojourn in Paris. Dressed in my clothes, the duke would resemble me enough to fool a casual observer. As to my own alibi for the night, I was forced to forfeit it, for my lover’s actual arrest was a more pressing concern than my potential arrest.

The visit to the rue de la Harpe had soon been accomplished, the uniform despatched, the duke in a state of elation. I’d told him I would call for him again at two in the morning. “We will have to leave Paris at once, your Grace,” I’d said, and he promised to be ready.

When I’d stepped into the street, I closed my eyes, emptied my mind of anything but _him_ , waited for my senses to pick up his trace, and directed my steps towards the Pont Neuf. A quarter of an hour later, I stood at the gate of Fort L'Eveque, where Athos was imprisoned. Gaining access was a matter of minutes, and I was conducted to the cell where he was kept in solitary confinement.

“How did you find me?” Athos’ tone was mocking, for he knew exactly how.

“I always find you,” I said.

“Wherefore, Aramis?” he whispered, in a changed voice, layered by infinite sadness. I felt my blood rise.

“Would you rather I hadn’t come?”

“Why _did_ you come?”

“I’m rescuing you, you stupid ass. Come with me!”

“Where are you going, Aramis?”

“What? Home.”

“No, _where_ are you going, Aramis?”

I ground my teeth. He knew, of course he knew, and he was going to make me say it. My hand twitched, desperate to reach out to him, but I controlled myself. “I've got to... St. Valery. I've _got_ to, Athos,” I said, hating the pleading sound of my voice.

“Ah. Not Tours then.”

“No, not Tours.” Marie was more than capable of returning to her exile in Tours without my help; my role in the undertaking was to conduct Buckingham safely to his ship. “Now will you stop being an ass and come with me?”

“To St. Valery? I don't think so.”

“No, not to St. Valery, as well you know. Out of here. Home.”

“No thank you. I'm quite comfortable here.” He waved an elegant hand and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms. “You flitter off, sweet flittermouse. It’s a long way to St. Valery.” He measured me with that look of heathen insolence, well aware of the fury that boiled in my veins. “And please do send my regards to your father, mother, brother and all your sisters when you pass Rouen. I hope the family business that calls you away for five days is not a melancholy one. Nobody died, I take it?”

“Not. Yet.” I squeezed out through clenched teeth.

Athos barked out a laugh that tore through my heart. “Ah! Well said, Aramis! Very well said. Not yet.”

“Athos!” I wanted to snarl at him, but it came out a desperate cry. He scared me. “How did we get here?” I whispered, shivering under my robe.

“Well…” Athos said, lounging against the wall with his head thrown back. “I got here because I was taken for our dear friend d’Artagnan and was arrested in his stead. And you got here, because you were taken for a man of the robe. Which, incidentally, suits you rather well. It’s a much better cut than that potato sack you used to wear when we first met.”

 _And you couldn’t put them right?_ I wanted to throw in his face. But that would have been futile, for of course he could have put them right. He was not here because the guards mistook him for someone else. He was here, because he wanted to be here. Because he insisted on punishing himself and on punishing me for sins… for a sin that was two centuries old, or three thousand years old, and which hung over his head like a curse.

Oh, right. It _was_ a curse. It was not until Athos’ return from his watery grave that I had begun to understand the full extent of Hera’s wrath: she had not meted out one punishment. She’d forced him to regulate all aspects of his life, to watch every step, to live in constant fear of transgression. Athos mocked the One God for cruelty, but at least He had shown us a way to cleanse ourselves from sin by repenting and to obtain forgiveness through penance.

“Come home, Athos,” I was not above begging at this point. “Please.”

For the span of a breath, time stood still, and I sensed a change in his mood. I could taste it. But then Athos exhaled softly. “No.”

“You fucking asshole!” I hissed, anger and fear churning inside my breast like white-hot pitch. I leapt towards him, poised to strike, but he was prepared. He grabbed my wrists, swirled us both round and slammed me against the wall.

“Is that what you want, little chyortik?” He breathed against my ear, pinning me to the wall with his body. I groaned in despair. I’d forgotten how strong Athos was, for he had let me manhandle him, drink from him, take him. He’d permitted me to see him drained and weak, to watch him sleep and to feel him cry. The pressure of his body against mine, the way he immobilised me with his hands and his hips – all of a sudden, memories of our first encounter resurfaced: the way he had held me down, the way he had pressed down on me as I lay beneath him in his tent. That memory was my undoing, for Athos shifted his hips like he had done that night and pushed his groin into mine. He began to laugh. “I know what you want,” he murmured and tilted his head, pressing his neck to my lips. “Take it.”

“ _No_.” I could have fought, perhaps. But I didn’t.

“Take it, Aramis. It is yours.” Oh, that mocking tone that I knew so well. It never failed to send a shiver down my spine. But this time, it was a shiver of fear – for even though I had heard the mocking oft, I had always heard it underpinned with tenderness.

It was now cold and sliced through me like steel. “Don’t make me force you,” he whispered, lapping at my ear.

“ _Athos._ ”

“Very well, then.” My poignard, liberated from its confines in my vestments, flashed in his hand. A sudden jolt, the imperceptible sound of flesh being slashed open, a gash through his neck, black with blood. My vision blackened and my head spun. “Drink it, Aramis.” Athos let the poignard drop to the ground. “Or it won’t heal.”

My fangs had dropped the moment the first drop of blood had welled up. I fastened my mouth to the side of his neck. Liquid life, liquid light surged into my mouth, drowning out anger and fear and leaving nothing but bliss. My head and souls were filled with the divine light that only the communion with Athos granted. His blood was richer than the most potent wine, darker, stronger, _more_. I would never get enough of it. It opened me up and filled me; it numbed my senses and sparked them to life. It dissolved and assembled me. It was destruction and creation. It was my undoing.

I clung to him, fingers scrambling over his back, clutching at the fabric of his doublet, and his hips drove into me. He was as hard in his breeches as I was beneath my robe. He was always hard for me. Even when I drained him from blood and left him half dead, his body got flung into waves of arousal the moment my mouth alighted on his skin. The moment my fangs pierced it. His blood was mine in more ways than one. I was the moon that controlled its ebb and flow.

A dry sob escaped my throat and I choked. I was draining him again. I sapped him from his strength. I was his undoing. That was my curse: my touch, my love weakened him.

I dragged my fangs back in and pressed the flat of my tongue to the wound, healing it with soft licks. I felt Athos’ throat vibrate with laughter. “So considerate, Aramis,” he muttered. “You know you could leave me on the ground, exsanguinated, and I would live.”

I dragged my teeth over his freshly healed skin. “Why, Athos?” His hand on my hip, his cock pressed against mine as he rutted against me with harsh jolts of his pelvis. Lust rose like mist from a bog, clouding my senses and my mind. I closed my eyes and stepped into the fog, let myself fall into the scent of blood and sweat that I had known for two and a half centuries. The skin of his neck was damp with perspiration and rough with drying blood. He was panting into my shoulder, leaving warm mouth-shaped imprints in the fabric of my robe. There was no space between our bodies, yet he managed to shove his hand there nevertheless, dragging his nails over my cock through the layers of fabric. A jolt shot through me. I groaned into his neck, he laughed and slammed his hips into mine, trapping his hand between us. It was too much and it was not enough, just like the love that bound us together. It hurt; the hipbones digging into my abdomen, the hand rubbing against my cock as I fucked myself into the warmth and pressure of his body. I grabbed his hair and tugged his head back, exposing his throat to my mouth. “Athos,” I growled, licking a path all the way up to his chin. “You’ll be the death of me.”

He laughed again, shoulders shaking frantically, and then his hands dug into my thighs and he lifted me up. I hung suspended between the wall of stone and the wall of marble, my legs around his hips. And Athos, Athos fucking himself against me in earnest, crashing me into the wall, and I let my body slip out of my control and gave it over to him. I spilled myself in my clothes like a boy with a desperate moan. Athos went rigid against me, his thighs shuddering between mine, his heart pounding against my chest.

“Fuck.” I choked out when I could breathe again. I had slid down the wall and supported myself on trembling knees. Athos was bent double, bracing himself with one hand on his knee, the other hand against the wall, panting like Pheidippides after the Battle of Marathon.

I caught his eye. “Home?” I mouthed.

Athos straightened up and stepped aside so that he no longer stood between me and the door. “Go.”

***

I glided through the dark streets like a shadow, across the bridge, past Saint-Sulpice, into the rue de Vaugirard and into my house. I followed the gleam of a solitary candle. It led me to the prone body of Bazin, who snored on my chaise-longue. I slapped him soundly across the face and he jolted upright. He stared at me with horrified eyes, taking in my white face and blood-stained mouth.

“Where is the lady,” I asked in a low whisper.

“Gone,” he whispered back, shuffling backwards away from me.

I snarled at him, slicing the air with my fangs. “Gone where?”

“I don’t know,” Bazin whispered. And then, he crossed himself.

I left him to recover from his waking nightmare and strode into my bedroom. A whiff of Marie’s perfume hung in the air, but I could feel that she wasn’t there. I looked for a billet on the pillow, on the lavabo, the chest, tore frantically through the boudoir and the eating room. There was no letter, no glove, no handkerchief, nothing. I strode back to the bedroom and peeled off my robe. I had to change out of those clothes.

Bazin appeared in the door. “Forgive me, Monsieur,” he said in his mildest tones. “While you were gone, Planchet had left another message. M. d’Artagnan expects you at the Pomme-de-Pin.”

“Does he.” I pointed at the wardrobe. “Get me my old black doublet.”

Bazin’s mild expression didn’t falter when he helped me get dressed. “It sounded urgent.”

“Of course it did.” I didn’t have time to pay attention to M. d’Artagnan urgencies. But then, something deep within my chest stirred. A hunger that Athos could not satiate. For Athos’ blood had not been brimming over with fear when I drank him. My fevered tongue darted over my lips when I thought of the way d’Artagnan’s eyes would widen in panic when I disclosed my secret to him, before devouring his lifeforce.

I forced myself to inhale steadily. I had promised Athos I would not harm the kid. There was another, more mundane reason to see him: d’Artagnan had the unfortunate knack of stumbling nose-first into mysteries, and I needed to find out how much he knew.

When I arrived at the Pomme-de-Pin, Porthos was already there, rolling dice and cajoling with one of his wenches. I sank on the bench next to him. Porthos glanced at me from the side. “Wine?” he asked. By the time d’Artagnan had joined us, Porthos was merrily tipsy and I was desperate. He knew about Athos’ arrest, he knew that Athos insisted on staying in prison in d’Artagnan’s stead. And yet, when the kid swaggered towards us, rattling his spurs and fingering his moustache, Porthos’ hand did not move to the hilt of his sword. Instead, he squeezed my wrist and shook his head. “Athos wishes it,” he said quietly.

D’Artagnan flopped into a chair and flashed us a supercilious grin. “Good evening, gentlemen!” he exclaimed. “Thank you for coming, but it wasn’t necessary in the end. I have terminated the affair alone in which I had for a moment believed I should need your assistance.” He puffed out his chest and I closed my eyes as a dreadful calm rose from the pit of my stomach. _Marie_. She had been supposed to wait for my return. Marie was gone, Athos got arrested, and d’Artagnan had got entangled into an “affair”. 

I opened my eyes at looked at him, laughing, jesting, pouring wine down his gullet, and holding court. He was bragging about his mistress, professing himself very much in love with a pretty, mysterious woman, initiated in almost all the secrets of the court, which reflected such a charming gravity over her pleasing features. Her husband was a wealthy man, d’Artagnan was saying, which made her just the woman to walk with in the Plain St. Denis or in the fair of St. Germain, for she would be the one to procure all necessities with the contents of the conjugal purse. “I have often remarked to you, my dear friends, that you will benefit from my good fortune once it comes my way,” d’Artagnan continued. “Together, we will enjoy charming little dinners, where one touches on one side the hand of a friend-” and he reached across and pressed Porthos’ hand tenderly, “and on the other the foot of a mistress.” Porthos looked at me and grinned broadly, and I executed a well-aimed kick against his ankle. “On pressing occasions, in extreme difficulties, I will thus become the preserver of my friends!” d’Artagnan concluded his fanciful narrative. “For my mistress’ husband is a mercer, and his coffers are well stocked.”

My blood turned to ice. I stood abruptly. D’Artagnan stopped mid-word and looked at me in confusion, and I forced a bland smile onto my face. “Forgive me,” I said. “I must take leave. I’ve got a treatise to write. In Latin.”

Porthos shook his head and rolled his eyes at me, but I didn’t pay him any heed. _What_ had d’Artagnan done? I wasn’t naïve enough to hope that his “affair” didn’t have anything to do with the duke’s presence in Paris. But this was neither the time nor the place to interrogate him. I had to postpone that pleasure. Now, I had to hurry back to the rue de la Harpe and convey Buckingham to St. Valery.

***

The tonic that flowed through Athos’ veins animated my mind, my muscles and my senses so that I knew I would need neither sustenance nor sleep. On my way to St. Valery, I would find four relays on route: in Pontoise, where swift, ready-saddled horses awaited me and the duke in the stable of the inn. The same convenience was provided for in the tavern the Shield of France in the little village of Eccuis, outside the city gates of Rouen, where I was officially headed on urgent family business. After leaving Rouen behind, we would go to Neufchatel to equip ourselves with fresh horses in the Golden Harrow. Those horses would bring us to St. Valery, where a humble fisherman’s hut was our final destination. There, our ways would part, for the duke would board the ship that would carry him safely to his own shores. My leave of absence for five days gave me ample time to accomplish the journey, for I could have ridden all the way to St. Valery and back without repose or repast. Yet my travel companion was mortal, and I would have to take his human frailty into account.

My body was thrumming with energy as I rushed through the shadows, and my mind reeled with unanswered questions. D’Artagnan had not met the mercer’s wife until tonight, and already Mme Bonacieux was his mistress? Through the fog of dejection, fury and confusion, I snorted with a mirthless laugh. I had never met Mme Bonacieux, for it was always safest to avoid knowing people face to face whose acquaintance would be mutually compromising. It was perhaps not unlikely that a mercer’s wife would fall for the rustic charm of a Gascon, especially one so young and virile. Yet I found it hard to believe that even the most susceptible citizeness would be favourably disposed towards the prick of Cupid’s arrow in the three-hour window between escaping captivity and committing high treason. Call me cynical, but a woman’s mind in such circumstances, and likely also her heart, would be inclined to dwell on other matters than the acquisition of a lover.

Hidden behind the window curtain in 75 rue de la Harpe, I caught a glimpse of the famous Mme Bonacieux when she handed the duke of Buckingham in at the door. She was pretty, but no-one would ever mistake her for a lady. Lady of the Linen to her Majesty was the highest accolade she could ever aspire to in life. I had her to thank for the fact that my lodgings in rue de Vaugirard had to pose as the shop of a linen draper’s, which she visited under the pretence of running business errands. Marie had found that quite amusing. “You have designated Marie Michon a seamstress,” she’d said. “Fair is fair, beloved cousin-german. Who better to be the cousin of a seamstress than a linen draper?”

Monsieur le duc Buckingham radiated euphoria. “Chevalier, you see me a heartbroken man!” he declared grandiosely as he strode into the chamber where I waited for him, flinging his hat across the room and slinging his cloak to the ground. He was carrying a rosewood casket which he placed reverently in my hands. I bowed wordlessly and he stepped in front of the mirror, admiring himself in my musketeer’s uniform. It did become him marvellously. I set the casket aside and took advantage of his momentary distraction, watching him watch himself. He was my height and my build, with slender limbs and a waist that would indeed not look out of place in a bodice. It was most curious: he was about ten years older than I looked, and his whole person gave me an indication of what my own appearance would be, were I to age. Would Athos still desire me if- I ground my teeth and cast my eyes to the ground, hiding my expression from his Lordship. But I should not have worried: so immersed was he in the admiration of his own self, I could have flashed my fangs openly behind his back and he would not spot them.

For a moment, I was tempted. Athos’ blood… Athos’ blood coated my tongue and senses. It rushed through my veins and pulsed in my muscles. It made my heart throb. Athos’ blood would fuel my heart and my brain for days to come, I would feel him in every nerve and fibre of my body. That was my punishment. He had sent me away, my senses full of him, in the knowledge that I would neither sleep nor drink. That I would carry him with me as a part of myself, thinking of him, always, always, until his blood was replaced by another’s.

Buckingham had rid himself of my baldric and sword belt and began to unbutton my doublet. “Come, come, Monsieur le mousquetaire!” An elegant hand (though not as elegant as Athos’) beckoned me closer. “Help me disrobe. You need to put your uniform back on, yes?”

“Indeed.” I stepped behind him and pulled my doublet off his shoulders. “I’ve got a leave of absence, signed by M. de Treville, that will serve as our passport to get us out of the city.”

“This is most exhilarating!” Buckingham caught his eye in the mirror and smoothed down his fine moustache which the night’s excitements had rendered bristly. “Hand me the pomade.” He stretched out an arm imperiously, pointing at the chest where a multitude of jars, flasks, flagons and vials was stacked. I picked out the right one without hesitation and with a blank smile. “You have no idea, Monsieur,” he elaborated, waxing his moustache with a practised gesture, “of the extent of my love. Ah, I am mad, senseless, full of despair! Yet clinging to hope! My love consumes me, it fills me and burns me up.” Our eyes met in the mirror. “Have you ever felt a love as all-consuming as mine?”

Athos’ blood gave a mighty throb and burst into a blush in my cheeks. The duke saw it and smiled. “Oh, but you are young, Monsieur. At your age, any love is believed to be the greatest, the only true love. I followed the call of my mistress across waters and into enemy’s land, to catch a glimpse of her angelic face, to hear the sweet melody of her voice, to fall to her feet and kiss her white hands. A stray look, a discarded ribbon are the most valuable gifts that I will cherish forever.”

I bowed without a word. The contents of the rosewood casket seemed a gift more valuable than a discarded ribbon. “There isn’t anything that I would not do for her,” Buckingham continued. “Like Paris, I would start a war just to gain one of her smiles. Like Menelaus, I would raise armies to smash Troy to the ground.”

Another blush, more heated even than the first. As if Athos’ blood had reacted to the mention of ‘Troy’, the place where his fateful, accursed affair with the goddess Discordia had been consummated.

“Tell me, Monsieur,” he turned to me, “have you ever performed any gallant exploits for your mistress?”

I bowed so deeply that he couldn’t see my face. “This.” I said, gesturing to my discarded uniform. Playing Grigori to a man who fancied himself in love with a woman whom he’d met four times in his life.

But that was not the meaning he read from my gesture. “Ah, yes! Your assistance in this entire affair has been indispensable and you shall be rewarded.”

“My mistress’ smile is reward enough,” I informed him, squeezing out a smile of my own and staring at his jugular which throbbed enticingly over the open collar of his shirt.

“Good, good,” he said distractedly, glancing around. “I understand I am to leave Paris disguised as an abbé. You brought the robe?”

“Ah,” I said. “There was a change of plan.” I shrugged off the shabby black doublet I was wearing and handed it to him. “I’m afraid your Grace will have to play the role of my servant. It is less conspicuous for a musketeer to travel with his valet than with an abbé.”

The duke held the garment in his hand and turned it to and fro. “Interesting,” he said slowly. “Will this fit me?”

“It fits me.”

“Barely,” he said, proving that it had not escaped his eye of an arbiter elegantiarum that my body had outgrown the black doublet, which had become quite tight around the shoulders.

“We should also swap shirts,” I told him, for I had put on an old one that I meant to discard and give to Bazin.

His own shirt was already unlaced and he pulled it over his head. “Permit me.” He stepped before me and looked me straight in the eye. We were indeed the same height. Buckingham began to unlace my shirt and I stared at his neck that was within the reach of my teeth, my heart racing, my face flushed, not daring to raise my hands, not daring to open my mouth lest my fangs should gleam in candlelight.

Predictably, he mistook the signs.

A warm hand alighted on my cheek. “I wondered if your skin would be as soft as it looked,” he said with the smile of a man who didn’t know the meaning of the word “no”. I closed my eyes, but it was no good. Even though I no longer saw the pulse of his blood under his skin, I felt it in the palm of his hand. His warm breath, and then his lips upon mine, the pulse of his blood under delicate skin. The blood of Guillaume le Conquérant must have flown through his veins (Athos would know), for the tip of his tongue sought to boldly conquer my mouth – by force, if necessary. I pressed my lips tightly shut. It would not do for the prime minister of England to cut his tongue on my fangs and dribble blood into my mouth. I had promised Marie I would make sure that Buckingham reached his ship unscathed. And alas, not even the most cunning casuist would be able to argue that a wound to the neck, torn ligaments and an open jugular could still qualify as “unscathed”.

I pulled back, panting with effort and flushed with anger and greed. “Your Grace spoke of the sanctity of his love,” I said in my most dulcet tones, lowering my eyes to conceal their predatory gleam. England’s most powerful man stood within my reach, bare-chested and begging for it, and I had to forego him. I wondered what Athos would make of my self-sacrificial valour.

The duke chuckled and let go of me with one final caress. “Indeed I have. I pray at her altar every night.”

He put on the disguise more quickly than I would have expected, for I estimated that it took a man like him an hour to dress. Still, the thrill, the romance of the scenario appealed to his nature. He delighted in the role of the lover who snuck in to see his beloved and was sent away with nothing but a token that made for a poor surrogate.

I stood before him in my musketeer’s uniform and accoutrements, and he looked me up and down appraisingly. “You wear this uniform rather splendidly, Monsieur,” he said. I acknowledged the compliment with a bow. “Yes, I can tell how he mistook me for you,” he continued with a smirk.

My blood heaved and rolled like a ship in the storm. “Who?” Oh, I knew who.

“A young man attacked me tonight. The lover of my conductress, I understand. And a passionate one at that. Jealousy drove him to it, and had it truly been you and not myself – I regret to say, Monsieur, but I think you might have found yourself bleeding out on the cobblestones paving the Pont Neuf.”

“Pardon me, your Grace, but how did you relieve yourself of him?” For I could do with advice, and I knew that he had not treated the Gascon to a sword thrust, worst luck.

“The moment he realised that I wasn’t you and that my business had nothing to do with his mistress, he turned quite docile. I commissioned him with walking at a distance of twenty paces behind us, which appeared to satisfy him.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes, that seems to be an excellent trick.” I opened the door and bowed to the duke. “It’s time, your Grace.”

Verily, the Gascon had the devil’s own luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events retold in this chapter are all genuine 100% canon: Aramis' house being Intrigue Headquarters for several weeks; Athos getting himself arrested; Aramis taking leave of absence for "family business"; Marie de Chevreuse being in Aramis' house in the night of the Intrigue to conduct Communication Moste Secretive; the horse relay system that Buckingham knows about; Buckingham wearing a musketeer's uniform and being mistaken for Aramis and Aramis for him. D'Artagnan attacking "Aramis" on sight. We didn't make any of it up.


	3. The Road to Calais

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The St. Augustine chapter Aramis talks about is canon in the truest sense of the word. Dumas, we are so onto you.

**September, 1625**

Athos and Aramis were driving me insane. ‘Hell’ would have been a kind word for what they were putting each other, and by extension - me, through. So grievous was their state, that I found myself turning to the Gascon for companionship more and more, much to Aramis’ ire and Athos’ obstinate glee. D’Artagnan may have been boastful and overzealous, always acting as if he had discovered the New World (from his window), but at least he wasn’t a hurricane ripping himself apart from the inside, not like Messieurs Sick and Grosser (although you’d have to tell me which was which).

However, safe as my house was from the young d’Artagnan’s prying eye, it was never intended to keep my immortal comrades out. Therefore, I was not at all surprised finding Athos sprawled out in the middle of my bed, utterly insensate, reeking of stale wine lees, and snoring softly. I looked at the clock - it was indeed rather early in the evening.

“Push over, you epic lush,” I picked up his legs and dropped them onto the left side of the bed, to make room for myself. It was still not enough room. Plus, he rolled towards me, as if sucked in by the vortex created by the weight of my body, and proceeded to drool on my shoulder. “What’s the point of having your own place if you’re going to show up here at all hours of day and night?” I asked, ruffling his hair affectionately. 

He furrowed his brow at me. “I’m hiding from Grimaud,” he said.

“Ah.” I did not know what to say to that, exactly. Athos’ relationship with his Grigori was downright the epitome of domestic bliss compared to his relationship with his actual lover.

“And I hate Bazin. That sanctimonious prick.”

“Everyone hates Bazin,” I concurred. “He’s the worst of them.”

During my sojourn in the Languedoc, in that land of witchcraft and mysticism, or, as Aramis told me to refer to it as - hereticism, I had learned many a useful secret. My old mistress herself was quite a bit of a witch, well versed in the darkest of arts. Like Eve was made from Adam’s rib, she could make a homunculus out of the essence of your worst qualities, and this being would be your familiar, forever bonded to you in loyalty. I was fortunate, I suppose, in that the worst thing one could say about me was that I enjoyed a good meal, a healthy sense of pride, and a bit of a propensity for taking what was not technically mine (but only when I really wanted it quite a bit). Mousqueton was a Master’s dream, all charm and beaming smiles, not to mention loyal to the death. However, when we had decided to make a familiar for Aramis, whose bad fortune with servants was becoming proverbial, we ended up with… well… Bazin.

“You should see the way he sneers when he delivers messages to me,” Athos made a motion with his hand that made it very clear how very dead Bazin would be if he and that hand were ever to meet in a dark alley.

“Messages, you say? Have the two of you stopped speaking completely?”

“We speak. In public. We say ‘Good day to you, sir, and I hope your wound isn’t still bothering you.’ And ‘Oh, fare you well, Monsieur, I have a treatise to translate into Latin and then back into French and then into Ancient Sumerian, I’m so terribly busy.’”

“Stop,” I placed my hand over his mouth. “You’re both idiots.”

Athos muttered something into my hand that did not sound like disagreement.

“He loves you, you know. You didn’t see him back then… You don’t know how much he suffered the loss of you.” I did not know why I bothered. It was clear the two of them were locked in some sort of a deadly spiral, from which there was no coming out unscathed.

“He has a strange way of showing his love,” Athos burrowed into one of my pillows. “Perhaps he’s lost it and is looking for it in the petticoats of every trollop in Paris.” I shook my head, not able to contradict him. “But especially with the Ondine. He writes poetry to her, you know.” An exhalation escaped him, propelled no doubt by lugubrious amounts of wine that would have finished off a mere mortal.

“Would you like him to woo you in poetry?”

“No.”

“Then?”

His arms wrapped franticly around the pillow, and for a moment I wondered if he wasn’t trying to suffocate himself. And then I saw his back tremble. I let my hand pat him on top of the head, awkwardly, for bringing comfort wasn’t something for which I had natural inclination. Still, he was devastated, and it was tearing me apart to watch him.

“Poor cousin,” I said and immediately bit my own tongue. ‘Cousin’ had been what Aramis had taken to calling his nymph, which made the familial term somehow defiled.

“Why am I not enough for him?” he whispered. I did not know how to reply to him. Why was the sky blue? Why did I feel like bedding a different wench every other night of the week? “I used to be enough for him,” he said, letting his eyes close. 

I thought, sadly, of my bed, and how very little use of it I would get with him still in it.

“Go to him. Talk to him.”

“Say what to him?”

“Whatever it is - this _thing_ you’re carrying around that you won’t talk to him about. He says… he feels that you’re locking him out.”

“He says that?”

“He says a lot of things.”

“To _you_.”

“You’re jealous of me too, now?”

Athos moaned and rolled into me again, his nose landing in my armpit and shooting right back out as soon as he made contact. Our eyes met, my eyebrows rose, I wondered whether this was one of his moments of lucidity. He claimed he had them, but it was getting more and more difficult to distinguish one from the other.

“I don’t know how to be myself anymore, Porthos,” he said. Lucidity? Perhaps not exactly.

“Go to him,” I repeated and pushed him out of the bed. 

He swept up his hat and cloak from the nearby chair and waved at me from the doorway. His step had been surprisingly steady for a man in his state of inebriation. 

“Are you going to him?” I shouted after him, damning myself for caring about the two of them at all.

“I’m going home. Where I will proceed to give Grimaud a good thrashing. Good night, dear friend!”

“Assholes!” I complained to the model of the Grilled Octopus. It neither commiserated nor mocked my pain. “Fucking children is what they are,” I groused. “Worse than children. Children don’t know better!”

“Indeed, sir,” Mousqueton was standing in the doorway, holding a folded letter in his hand. “A messenger came from captain de Treville, Master.”

“What the devil is this?”

“The leave you requested?”

I took the letter from my heretic-made servant and read it, written plainly in the captain’s hand. “The waters at Forges! What on earth has the Gascon gotten us into _now_?” For as much as Aramis and Athos peeved me, there was no mistaking this development for their fault.

***

Ever since my return from St. Valery, things had changed between my friends and myself. I avoided their company – having found my place occupied by the Gascon – and devoted a lot of time to my studies. Athos’ sardonic smirks were the most common response whenever I mentioned my theologising. To an extent he was right, as I found it the most convenient excuse to conceal other, rather more clandestine, undertakings. Yet it was not entirely a lie. For if our sojourn with Porthos’ merry mistress in Languedoc had taught me anything, it was that I was ignorant of the nature of my own self.

Languedoc was a land where ancient rites had not yet been entirely eradicated, and it did not surprise us in the slightest that Porthos had gained the affection of a lady whose skills exceeded those of a virtuous Christian widow. Porthos’ drunken suggestion to use my ‘worst qualities’ to fashion a servant who would be bound to me forever had taken hold and I gave in to temptation. Would it, thought I, lying awake at night while Athos slept next to me, mouth pressed to my shoulder, one hand pressed to my heart – would it rid me of my second soul? Creatures like me were born with two souls, as the teachings of my youth went. I had never questioned them. I did not know the reason why I had woken after being slain, and risen a demon. I had heard many theories of demonic origins, for the folk-lore in the eastern countries delighted in such tales. The tale of two souls in one breast was among the more plausible ones.

Were my demon soul to be trapped in a mortal vessel, it would be contained. It would no longer fill me with unquenchable hunger. It would no longer make me thirst for Athos’ blood.

Athos stirred against me and I brushed my fingers over his wrist. He had accused me more than once since his return from the sea that it was the craving for his blood that tethered me to him. Our sacrament, our holy communion – centuries ago, it had been our salvation. Now, it had put us on the road to perdition.

Bazin had been born from the spells of the wise woman, who presented him to me beaming with artisan pride. He was a middle-aged creature, mild, peaceable, sleek, and of such a pious disposition that it made Athos roar with laughter. “I always knew that this was your worst quality, little chyortik,” he said with his heathen smirk. “Has the creation of your homunculus rid you of your religious inclinations?”

It had not. For I felt the same soul still flutter in my breast and I wondered if I had been wrong all those years. If, per chance, death had spat me out a revenant for reasons that I had not yet begun to fathom. Providence (or Fate, if one were to agree with Athos’ Achaean worldview) guided my steps to the Jesuit College in Toulouse. I stood, transfixed, staring at words that assembled themselves to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to essays that appeared to hold the key to the eternal mystery of my life after death: scholars at the Society of Jesus had been researching into the nature of demonic creatures for decades, and the results of their work were compiled and archived in their colleges and monasteries. I picked up a treatise at random and began to read. Four hundred years on this earth, and finally I might be able to understand the secret of my existence.

I had continued those studies after we’d come to Paris. My lover… could I even call him that anymore? _Athos_ smirked and sneered at my renewed interest in theology. He was secure in his lineage; his origins were no secret to him, his powers, his limitations, all were known. Of us two, he may have been the bastard by birth, but I was the one who knew nothing of his heritage.

In the weeks that followed the duke’s noble and chivalrous escape from Paris, Athos and I communicated mostly by letter. Brief though they were, his notes were masterpieces of the epistolary and calligraphic art. Occasionally, I read a deep melancholia between the lines that made my heart ache. I ventured into the streets of Paris then, looking for men whom nobody would miss. But I could not do it, for I knew that Athos would know what happened, what I had done. I could barely look him in the face as it was; it didn’t bear thinking about how bad things would become if I gave him reason to pin me down with those mocking eyes, curling a corner of his mouth in a not-quite smirk.

Occasionally, very occasionally, his billets contained a word, a phrase that pierced me to the very marrow of my bones, like a stray Cupid’s arrow. I knew then why I’d fallen in love with Athos, and I followed his veiled entreaty (for he would not lower himself to spell it out for me) and showed up on his doorstep in the dead of night. Grimaud, the long-suffering Grimaud, let me in, and I would slink into Athos’ bedchamber where I’d find him waiting for me, in his dressing gown, a glass in hand and a mocking smile curled in the corner of his mouth. That smile broke my heart. His embrace afforded me some comfort, and I could only hope that he felt the same. We didn’t talk, as if unwilling to profane the sacred silence which we pulled like a mantle over our pain. We wielded words like weapons, and we were afraid of cutting one another if we were to speak. Darkness and silence had become our temple, one that I left before the first cock-crow, slinking away as silent as I had come. He slept. For my benefit or for his – he always slept when I went away, for anything else would be unthinkable.

Two more months passed like that. It was ironic that, back in the days when we were happy, I had not been keeping track of time. Athos had been the one who knew which year it was, and which month. I had learned to count the days after he had disappeared in his watery grave.

And so I knew that it was September 20th when d’Artagnan knocked at my door. That was the first time he came to my house since the night of Buckingham’s visit to the Louvre. I was not in the mood for him; it had been a gloomy day and I crouched at my desk, hunched under a bout of melancholia that rivalled that of Athos. Unlike Athos, I did not find comfort in wine. Because of Athos, I had lived on mortal food for weeks, for I had refused to consummate our covenant ever since that dreadful night in his prison cell, where for the first time he had looked at me with eyes that were not his own.

D’Artagnan, with his customary cunning, asked a few leading questions, striving to ascertain the reason for my melancholia. I expressed my gratitude for his solicitude for my well-being.

“Ah, my dear d’Artagnan. It is the most vexing matter, which has preoccupied me a great deal. I am obliged to write a commentary upon the eighteenth chapter of St. Augustine – the eighteenth, mind!” I paused, deliberated, and then continued: “In it, the Church Father discusses _What We Should Believe Concerning the Transformations Which Seem to Happen to Men Through the Art of Demons_ , as I’m sure you know, and points out that it is believed that the demons can accomplish nothing by their natural power – for their created being is itself angelic, although made malign by their own fault – except what He may permit, and whose judgments are often hidden, but never unrighteous.” I saw d’Artagnan’s eyes glaze over, and added, in my most lugubrious tones: “In Latin.”

According to my (hidden, yet not unrighteous) judgment, this should have been the moment when he would get up from his chair and take his leave. To my surprise, he persevered and even asked a question or two, which I answered (in Latin).

Our learnèd debate was interrupted by a knock at the door. A servant from M. de Treville entered, bringing a sealed packet.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The leave of absence Monsieur has asked for,” replied the lackey.

“For me! I have asked for no leave of absence.”

“Hold your tongue and take it!” d'Artagnan hissed at me from the side. “And you, my friend, there is a demi-pistole for your trouble. You will tell Monsieur de Treville that Monsieur Aramis is very much obliged to him. Go.”

I looked at d’Artagnan askance and decided that suffering his impertinence in silence was my penance and that I would not go against the rules imposed on me by Athos, God and the Law. I waited for the lackey to bow and depart, before I inquired further. “What does all this mean?”

“Pack up all you want for a journey of a fortnight, and follow me,” my general commanded with an imperious gesture, rattling his sword and spurs and curling his lips proudly. For a moment, I was speechless. The kid had just spent half an hour chatting with me about matters that did not interest him in the least without bothering to tell me that he had contrived to have us sent on a mission. A fortnight away from Paris! M. de Treville was within his right to order me on a mission without consulting and informing me in advance, but I’d be _damned_ if I let the Gascon boss me around like that. I’d be damned if I left Paris now, when Athos was getting more and more fraught. I hadn’t seen Athos in two days, and I had to make sure that he was all right before I could even think of going away. France and her monarchs be damned to Hell and Hades.

“But I cannot leave Paris just now without knowing-” I stopped at the sound of my own voice.

“What is become of her? I suppose you mean,” interjected d’Artagnan.

“Become of whom?” I frowned.

“The woman who was here – the woman with the embroidered handkerchief.”

For the span of a heartbeat, I did not know what he was talking about. The moment realisation dawned, cold fury shot to my head and rendered me pale as death. “Who told you there was a woman here?” Two months. For two months I had executed a restraint with which one could tame wild horses, biting back my desire to question d’Artagnan about his involvement in the events of that night. The information I had got from Buckingham on our way to St. Valery had been quite illuminating: d’Artagnan had followed Mme. Bonacieux to my house, accosted her with accusations of faithlessness, for he suspected her of having an affair with me and cheating on him and his three-hour-old love (it was my understanding that he expected her to cheat on her husband), detained her long enough to make her tardy for her appointment in the rue de la Harpe, and his heroic actions culminated in attacking the duke, sword in hand, after mistaking him for me. Buckingham had found the incident highly amusing and entertained me with the tale on our journey to St. Valery, for, as he pointed out repeatedly, my young friend had been fierce in his defence of his mistress’ honour and most vicious in his assault of me.

“I saw her,” d’Artagnan told me. I assembled my features into an expression of doe-eyed innocence. The time for the long overdue interrogation had come.

“And you know who she is?”

“I believe I can guess, at least.” Oh! Of course he could guess.

“Listen!” I said. “Since you appear to know so many things, can you tell me what is become of that woman?” How much did he know? How much had he seen?

“I presume that she has returned to Tours.” Ah! ‘ _Presume._ ’

“To Tours? Yes, that may be. You evidently know her.” I gave a curt bow to indicate that I acknowledged his perspicacity. The boy either didn’t know anything or didn’t want to tell me anything. ‘Presume!’ I, too, _presumed_ that Marie had returned to Tours, for that was where she lived. What I needed was a confirmation, be it from herself or from someone who had spoken to her. “But why did she return to Tours without telling me anything?”

“Because she was in fear of being arrested.”

“Why has she not written to me, then?” Two months. Two months and no letter, nothing. She must have returned to her exile in Tours, for had she been detained, news of her arrest would have seeped through by now. Contrary to what d’Artagnan believed, the cardinal did not actually keep duchesses locked up in his secret lair of tortures.

“Because she was afraid of compromising you.” I couldn’t help smirking. Marie, who had been using my house for weeks to conduct clandestine communication with Mme. Bonacieux, suddenly overcome by guilt and fear? Something must have spooked her, and I was prepared to venture a guess what that ‘something’ had been. I had not learned anything about Marie that I could not have guessed myself, but I had learned that d’Artagnan was not disposed to disclose his part in the affair to me.

“D’Artagnan, you restore me to life!” I cried enthusiastically, for I expected that flattery would loosen his tongue. “I fancied myself despised, betrayed. I was _so_ delighted to see her again! I could not have believed she would risk her liberty for me, and yet for what _other_ cause could she have returned to Paris?” Yes, for what cause? You tell me, my young friend. For what cause if not for me? What duchess would _not_ risk her liberty for the pleasure of rolling around in my bed?

But he refused to flatter my vanity. “For the cause which today takes us to England.”

“And what is this cause?” I pressed him.

“Oh, you'll know it someday, Aramis; but at present I must imitate the discretion of ‘the doctor’s niece.’”

I smiled. It was touching. The Gascon, who had seen Marie at my house; who had found Mme. de Bois-Tracy's handkerchief in my possession; who had followed the duke dressed in my uniform and took him for myself; who knew of my leave of absence for the days following Buckingham’s visit – the Gascon attempted to keep the affair a secret from me. Athos was right, the boy was most amusing. So amusing, in fact, that my melancholia and my irritation evaporated momentarily. “Well, then, since she has left Paris, and you are sure of it,” _and not merely executing a stab in the dark as is your wont_ , “nothing prevents me, and I am ready to follow you. You say we are going-”

“To see Athos now, and if you will come thither, I beg you to make haste, for we have lost much time already. À propos, inform Bazin.”

“Will Bazin go with us?” I asked my general, nay, sovereign, nay _emperor_!

“Perhaps so. At all events, it is best that he should follow us to Athos’.”

So Athos was going. That was getting better and better. I called Bazin, and, after having ordered him to join us at Athos’ residence, I said, “Let us go then.” I gathered my cloak, sword, and three pistols, opened uselessly two or three drawers to see if I could not find stray coin. When well assured this search was superfluous, I followed d’Artagnan.

Something else occurred to me, and I stopped d’Artagnan in the door with a hand upon his arm. He had demonstrated admirable reticence when it came to disclosing the affair in which I had been entangled for weeks secret from me, but could I be sure that he executed the same discretion towards others?

“You have not spoken of this lady?” I asked him.

“To nobody in the world.”

“Not even to Athos or Porthos?”

“I have not breathed a syllable to them!” He gazed at me earnestly, and I remembered that Athos judged the kid to understand the virtue of honour.

“Good enough!” After all, even if he had mentioned anything to Athos, what harm could that do? Athos knew enough, even without d’Artagnan’s interference, to despise me.

When we arrived at Athos’ lodgings a few minutes later, we found him holding his leave of absence in one hand, and M. de Treville’s note in the other. ‘The waters at Forges’, it appeared, beckoned.

***

We left in the middle of the night, barely giving me opportunity to gaze longingly at my ball of sunshine hidden at my abode. I was never at my best at night, and this being autumn, the nights grew longer as the days grew shorter. Athos and Aramis, both as adept at moving around in darkness as well as light, flanked me somberly and exchanged barely a word. D’Artagnan, assuming the role of our general (even though we technically followed Athos’ plan), led the way of the caravan.

“What is the point of any of this time wasting?” Aramis finally hissed. “We know very well the fastest way to get to the coast, and by using the fastest relay horses available.”

“A plague upon your nymph’s relay system,” Athos responded and spurred his horse ever onwards, catching up with d’Artagnan.

“I hope he gets stabbed again,” Aramis sighed.

“You don’t mean that,” I shook my head at him.

“Doesn’t matter. It won’t kill him.”

We barely exchanged another word until we arrived at Chantilly. By then, the sun was starting to rise, albeit not as rapidly and blazingly as in the summer months. Still, I was beginning to feel more like myself. The late September mist and gusts of wind did not agree with me, however, the promise of breakfast and wine lifted my spirits significantly. 

We had arranged ourselves around the table at the common room, Athos sitting next to d’Artagnan and across from Aramis. I watched the two of them like a hawk for any sign of trouble while d’Artagnan ordered our repast.

“This is all your fault, you know,” Athos whispered hotly.

“Leave him alone,” I kicked my Olympian cousin under the table and found Aramis’ foot in my way.

“I would, were it not for the fact that loverboy here actually allowed that English fop to escape back home with whatever it is that we’re being sent now to retrieve!”

At this moment, d’Artagnan returned accompanied by a rather fetching wench who carried wine and bread, and Athos beamed upon him blatantly and complimented his ability to order as if it somehow required going above and beyond all human capacity. Aramis cast me a look that spoke louder than words and I reached for the wine, beginning to rue the day I had sworn friendship to the lot of them.

In the meantime, I glanced under the table to see Aramis kick off one of his boots and shove his entire foot in between Athos’ spread thighs. To my cousin’s credit, he barely moved a muscle (other than the muscle now being rubbed by Aramis’ toes, no doubt). To distract them, I loudly announced how ravenous I was and that I could literally eat the entire tavern. Indeed, I could. D’Artagnan, oblivious to these developments, spoke to us in hushed tones. 

“Such terrible weather, gentlemen!” I suddenly heard behind us. “It looks to rain, don’t you find? Oh how I miss the dog days of summer!”

Athos grimaced. The dog days of summer, just like the early days of summer, or really any days of summer, filled him with an even more profound melancholy than the rest of the year, for those were the days that most recollected to him the times that he and Aramis had been happy. 

“Indeed, Monsieur, I am rather fond of the sunshine myself!” I responded, realizing no one else was going to be of any use with the uninvited interlocutor.

“I drink to your health, gentlemen!” the intruder announced and we acknowledged his rather courtly gesture with short bows.

“Just past eight in the morning,” Aramis whispered, shooting a look of disdain the stranger's way, “and already in his cups.” Athos’ hand trembled, I suspected because of whatever Aramis’ foot did. Again I gave the two of them the most blatant look of disapproval I could muster and Aramis shifted in his seat and pulled his boot back on.

It was shortly thereafter that Mousqueton had arrived to announce the horses were ready and the uninvited nuisance had asked us to toast the Cardinal’s health.

What happened next, I am not proud to recount. I suppose, I could make excuses, blame it on the weather, on the fact that the sun was still too low over the horizon, on the wine that surely went to my head, or even on the fact that my two bosom companions had infected me with their tragic bad luck. But why focus on the negatives? We can all agree that being immortal, and therefore taking three inches of steel to the chest and surviving, all told, was somewhat of a victory.

Laid out with this sword thrust that would have certainly killed anyone else, I had taken up lodgings at the Grant Saint Martin Hôtel where we had broken fast. I hope that having heard my part of the story, that you do not judge me very harshly for not choosing to chase after the three of them. In fact, at that very moment in time, I never thought to see d’Artagnan alive again. For surely those two monsters left alone with the kid would have torn him to shreds, if not each other.

***

The loss of Porthos was too convenient to have been coincidental. “That’s one!” I spat out, when he had ridden a ways off. Without Porthos to act as our buffer, I began to worry that things would come to blows all too quickly, and not at the hands of the Cardinal’s agents.

“But why did the man attack Porthos rather than anyone else?” Aramis asked, his eyes traveling steadily into the direction of the Gascon as he pronounced ‘anyone else’.

“Because Porthos talks louder than the rest of us, and he took him for the leader,” the kid replied, beaming with pride at his incredible deduction. Some positive reinforcement seemed to be in order.

“I always said this young Gascon was a wellspring of wisdom,” I murmured loud enough for both of them to hear. Aramis flashed me his fangs in the late morning light and spurred his horse onwards.

About an hour later, I pulled my horse alongside his, not breaking the stride. With a human, conversing at a gallop would have required yelling, but with Aramis and his heightened senses, it only required me to speak normally.

“Porthos isn’t coming.”

“I don’t blame him. I’m sick of us too,” he replied barely turning his head towards me. I let out a half-laugh and rode on. “Let’s kill the kid,” Aramis suddenly suggested. “You and I can go to England alone and fix this whole mess.”

“Eager to see your friend Buckingham again?” I asked.

“You said yourself - this is my fault. I like to fix the things I break.”

“Not all of them.”

I spurred on my horse, catching up with d’Artagnan.

Another hour later, at Beauvais, we had concluded that waiting upon Porthos would be useless and, having given our horses a necessary rest, we set off again until we hit that infamous trap the Cardinal had laid for us. By this point, Aramis’ blood, which had been threatening to boil over for some time, seemed to reverse in his veins and hit him straight in the head. The torrential outpouring of curses he bestowed upon the road workers made my own ears turn red and I had reached out towards him to rein him back in. Alas, it had been too late.

“Whatsa matter, ye poncy git! Afeared of dirtying yer precious booties?” one of the men jeered.

“Mind your petticoats, princess!” another one shouted.

“Hera’s cunt!” I ground through my teeth and set my horse straight upon the miserable wretch who had dared speak this way to my beloved.

The scoundrels, suddenly armed to the teeth with muskets, had begun to fire upon us at close range. It was only their pathetic marksmanship that caused them to miss me entirely, managing to knock the wide-brimmed hat off of d’Artagnan’s diminutive head in the process. A shout sounded behind me as Mousqueton slid off his horse, clutching desperately at his own ass. 

“It’s an ambush,” d’Artagnan shouted, pointing out the obvious. “Don’t waste your primer, keep going!”

I looked to my right at Aramis who had clutched onto the mane of his horse with white knuckles. He had made no sound, nor called out for help, but I knew he had been hurt. We galloped onwards, crushing the remaining wretches beneath the hooves of our horses. When we were long out of shooting range, I noticed Mousqueton’s horse galloping along with the rest of ours.

“That makes one spare horse for us,” I pointed out, trying not to think about the way Aramis had clutched at his chest, the way he had grown pale, and long trail of blood that had followed the hoofprints of his stallion. D’Artagnan was prattling on about his lost hat. Aramis’ nostrils flared and his eyes locked with mine.

“How badly are you hurt?” I whispered.

“Shot in the heart,” he squeezed through his teeth. I looked quickly to see that indeed the trajectory of the bullet appeared to flow through his left shoulder and into the chest cavity.

“You need blood,” I said quickly, my eyes darting towards the Gascon. “We can’t…. Take mine.”

“Ah, but they’re going to kill poor Porthos when he comes along!” Aramis declared remonstratively. I shook my head at the fact that he managed to keep dissembling even in the clutches of agony.

“If Porthos was still on his feet, he would have caught up with us by now,” I put my arm around Aramis propping him up in the saddle. “I’m of the opinion that the drunkard sobered up on the dueling ground,” I said loudly and added quietly. “You need to take my blood.”

“No,” he grit his teeth together. “You need it as much as I do.”

At this moment d’Artagnan solicitously inquired after Aramis’ wound.

“It’s just my shoulder. We must keep going,” the stubborn ass declared and I let go of him, leaving him to gallop alongside us for the next two hours.

He grew weaker and weaker. Around Crèvecoeur, it became apparent that he could no longer stay upright in his saddle without needing to be supported. Once again, I brought my own horse about and wrapped my arm around his middle, pressing him close.

“Idiot,” I whispered tenderly in his ear. 

His eyes met mine and the stubborn sheen gave way to resignation. “I cannot go on,” he admitted. 

D’Artagnan, who spotted an inn up ahead, aimed our cavalcade directly for the place of potential respite.

“We’ll have to leave him here and go on without him,” the Gascon told me.

“Wait,” I said.

They had shown us to a small room, to which I had carried Aramis in my arms.

“Should a surgeon be sent for?” the lady of the house helpfully inquired.

“Right away,” I shoved coin into her hand and turned back towards Aramis, who lay on the bed in a semi-swoon, and knelt by his side. “You can eat the surgeon when he gets here,” I smiled weakly, “since you refuse to drink from me.”

“Athos,” his lips barely moved. I took his hand in mine and pressed it to my lips. “I’m sorry.”

“For getting shot?”

“You have to keep going.”

“Nonsense,” I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to. Marie…” He licked his dry lips and his eyelids fluttered closed.

“Of course,” I rose up from my knees. “Marie. Say no more. I’m leaving.”

“Athos…”

“No, my love, I think you’ve said enough.”

“Come back for me,” he whispered as my back was turned to him at the door of the room. I paused. I did not turn back to look at him. 

I descended the stairs and located d’Artagnan again. It was some kind of a cosmic joke that my companions lay by the wayside yet the boy was still in perfect health. How do you say ‘Hades’ balls!’ in French? Ah yes.

“Morbleu!” I exclaimed, spurring my horse onwards. I could feel the tether that still bound me to Aramis stretch to the point of bursting as we rode away. And here I was, on the road with a child, trying to clean up his nymph’s accursed intrigue, while he lay bleeding in some roadside inn. And there was nothing else I could do to help him. No indeed, I no longer wanted to help. I wanted to hurt him. “Morbleu! I won’t be their dupe again, and I guarantee you they won’t make me open my mouth or draw my sword from here to Calais. I swear it…” By my Father’s beard!

“Let’s not swear,” the boy responded, wisely, “let’s ride hard, if our horses will agree to it.” 

The night spent at Amiens was restless. I vacillated between my body’s need for rest and fears of nightmares. I hoped at least Planchet’s snoring carcass would prove to be a useful foil, if indeed I were to wake up from one of my nightmares intent on stabbing his master to death. Still, the dreams that came were not of the killing kind. Even in my sleep, my soul seemed to fly to him, the betraying flittermouse of my dreams. _Marie_. I had never seen her, but in my dreams she appeared clad in the shroud of a Grecian goddess and beckoned me to her. 

“Did you lose something, Athos son of Zeus?” she asked with a wicked smile. “Come now. I know exactly where you can find it.” She drew up her skirt and I woke up with a feeling of nausea choking me.

The following morning seemed a continuation of my nightmare. I almost wondered whether I had not, by some cruelty of fate, fornicated with another goddess in my sleep for bad luck could not have explained the unfortunate conglomeration of events. First, we found Grimaud unconscious with his head split open, then the affair with the horses, the so-called ‘mistake’ with the veterinarian. Did I trip and fall into a vagina the night before? I stared intently at d’Artagnan’s crotch trying to remember if he, much like Lysis, had turned himself into my sister and rode me like a pony while I slept. 

At last, our luck appeared to be turning, since two horses made themselves available for us to continue our journey. I had gone inside to pay for our lodging, only too glad to be leaving Amiens, despite being not overly happy about the prospect of returning to England. It seemed a travesty - England. But Aramis wished it. Nay, _Marie_ demanded it. Of course, the Rohan nymph, may her family line grow tired of sacrificing their infants so that she may grow old and die!

So lost was I in my vindictive thoughts, that when the innkeeper accused me of handing him false coin, I was taken completely aback. “Knave!” I exploded, drawing my sword. “I’ll cut off your ears!” 

As I advanced upon the scoundrel, side doors flew open and four armed men sprang forth and threw themselves like demons upon me. I shouted my warning to d’Artagnan and unloaded both my pistols into my new attackers. Two of them fell dead and I began to engage the others with my sword.

“Cutting off your ears would be too good for you, innkeeper!” I shouted at the traitor. “I shall have to cut off your balls and feed them to you for your supper!”

I stabbed another man, while beating a retreat, and knocked the plebeian knave who had offended me and my currency out with the pummel of my sword. Behind me, I glimpsed an open door. I did not know where it led, but the key had been in the lock. Another maneuver placed me at the door. I grabbed the key and retreated behind it, locking it from the inside.

I sank against the door, breathing heavily from the excitement of battle. I was not sure how many of those men I had left dead or bleeding on the floor, but I knew for sure that I had put at least a bullet in for both Porthos and Aramis. 

Behind me, the commotion had subsided. No doubt, my assailants had deemed me caught and scattered to report my location to the Cardinal. As my eyes pierced the darkness around me, my nose picked up a familiar and pleasant scent. I felt my way through the murk and struck upon caskets. “What have we here?” I smiled, continuing to explore my surroundings. Wine. Wine everywhere. Wine in caskets, wine in bottles. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.

I sank down to the floor in a fit of laughter. “Oh Aramis,” I thought, “Wish you were here.” I uncorked the first bottle and drank from it greedily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We do stick very closely to canon throughout. All events and dialogues in which d'Artagnan is involved are lifted straight from the book. We have merely switched the PoV, and it has become blatantly obvious what a huge massive lying liar Aramis is.


	4. The Return

**Crèvecœur, October 1625**

Was I dying? I had no way of knowing what would happen when a musket ball pierced my heart.

The world spun around me while I spun in the opposite direction.

Above me, Bazin’s pale face against the smoke-stained ceiling.

Black blood on my shirt, black blood on my skin. Black blood on his hands, Athos’ hands, when he laid me out on the bed as if on a bier. He would come back and hold vigil by my bedside. By my graveside.

“Bazin.” My voice barely more than a rasp, grating over bone-dry throat and wooden tongue. His face a pale spectre somewhere above my head. I reached out blindly and closed my fingers around his sleeve. “Don’t let them bury me.”

“No, Monsieur.”

The flash of metal, the edge of his knife, he was cutting my shirt off me to remove the ball. It would not do to let the surgeon see that he had acquired a patient who had survived a bullet to the heart.

The agony of being sliced open.

My teeth clenched around the rolled-up piece of cloth he’d shoved into my mouth. I was panting through my nose, walking into a tunnel whose walls shivered like mist, closing around me, sucking me deeper and deeper into darkness. I was blind, the only light was that of pain as it shot through my chest. Tendrils of pain wrapped around my throat like vines.

The sudden release, the hot rush of blood that my heart spat out through the hole in my chest. Bazin tugged the cloth out of my mouth, and icy air rushed to my lungs.

“Don’t let them bury me,” I whispered again, and again, like a prayer. Black blood from my wound, black soil in my mouth, choking me. Black beetles crawling into my eyes, eating me from the inside. I was blind, I was dumb, and then I fell into the darkness of oblivion.

Bazin’s pale face was the first thing I saw when I regained consciousness. He appeared not to have moved from my side, hovering above me like a spectre. I reached out, tentatively at first, then more forcefully, but it was no good. Bazin didn’t have anything I could feed on. He was a by-product, a waste product of my own self, regurgitated into the world an empty shell in human shape, void and unsubstantial.

He held a cup to my lips and I drank. Water.

“Surgeon?” I whispered.

“The surgeon dressed your wound and left, Monsieur.” Bazin mopped my brow with a detached gesture. “He said it was a miracle you’ve survived so far and that you will die of the wound.”

I snorted with laughter, but stopped straightaway, because pain shot through my heart.

“He sold me a balsam.” Bazin held a little jar aloft.

“Oh, good,” I whispered and closed my eyes. I had missed my chance to feed on the surgeon. I would have to wait for my landlord to pay me a visit.

In a droll twist of fate, the inn was run by a landlady. She brought in a tray with wine, bread and cheese in the early morning. “The poor gentleman,” she whispered at Bazin, with a side glance at me. “So well-made and amiable.” I saw Bazin’s thin-lipped smile and closed my eyes again. “The surgeon said he won’t make it.”

The surgeon was in for a surprise. My host being a woman, I was forced to take the long path to convalescence, for her blood was safe from me. But as I had not died straightaway, I would certainly not die now that the metal had been removed from my heart.

The slow path was a long and painful one. Ten days after being fatally shot, I began to leave my bed. Bazin brought me parchment, pens and ink, and I hunched at the oblong table, waiting for words that wouldn’t come. I wrote to Marie, but I tore the letter up. I wrote to Athos, but not on paper. The letters to him were just in my head, long, eloquent epistles that I drew up and revised every night before nightmares claimed me.

I wrote to the curate of Montdidier and the superior of the Jesuits of Amiens.

It was the first Friday in October when I was sat with those two worthy churchmen, under whose tutelage I was going to enter the Church, at the table in my chamber. I had despatched Bazin to Paris to fetch me my gown, my folios, my scripts, and Athos’ flagrum. Bazin had hid or sold my worldly possessions, my weapon and my accoutrements, and I could not find it in my heart to care. There was a huge black hole where emotions should have been.

And so, when the door opened and d’Artagnan came in, my pulse didn’t heave. “Good day, dear d’Artagnan,” I said. “Believe me, I am glad to see you.”

He professed himself delighted to see me, and proceeded to comment on my private concerns with his customary Gascon vigour. Yet even as he suggested that my visitors were hearing my confession and that his company, diverting though it was, might be undesired, he didn’t show any signs of leaving. Apparently, d’Artagnan was determined to learn about my sins.

I felt a blush creep into my cheeks as feeling trickled back into my heart, like blood trickles back into a numb limb. But then I remembered that d’Artagnan’s particular brand of impertinence had been sent upon me as penance, to test my patience and to teach me humility. “You disturb me?” I said therefore with perfect politeness. “Oh, quite the contrary, dear friend, I swear. And as a proof of what I say, permit me to declare I am rejoiced to see you safe and sound.” I infused my voice with much unction as I proceeded to present him to the two ecclesiastics. “This gentleman, who is my friend, has just escaped from a serious danger.”

“Praise God, Monsieur,” replied they, bowing together.

“I have not failed to do so, your Reverences,” d’Artagnan said with much politeness.

I smiled beatifically. The dangers of the road, perfidious ambuscades, musket fire, stormy waters, dastardly foes, the cardinal’s men, the English food, Bazin at the door, two churchmen at my table – none of it had detained d’Artagnan, who had pressed on regardless. Temptation beckoned, lured, ensnared, entrapped me, and I surrendered. “You arrive in good time, dear d'Artagnan,” I said, “and by taking part in our discussion may assist us with your intelligence. Monsieur the Principal of Amiens, Monsieur the Curate of Montdidier and I are arguing certain theological questions in which we have been much interested. I shall be _delighted_ to have your opinion.”

I saw a flicker of uneasiness upon his visage. He attempted to worm his way out of the discussion by pleading the ignorance of a swordsman, but I was having none of it.

“On the contrary,” I said. “Your opinion will be very valuable. The question is this: Monsieur the Principal thinks that my thesis ought to be dogmatic and didactic.”

Uneasiness, disbelief, panic. With a few words, I had transported him back to the schoolroom, which, I ventured a guess, had not been the battlefield upon which he had won most of his victories. Lounging in my easy chair as gracefully as if I were resting against the pillows in my bed, I watched the succession of emotions that contorted d’Artagnan’s features. I held my hand aloft and examined my fingers, inspecting my veins flood and ebb with miraculously replenished blood. “Now, as you have heard, d’Artagnan, Monsieur the Principal is desirous that my thesis should be dogmatic, while I, for my part, would rather it should be ideal. This is the reason why Monsieur the Principal has proposed to me the following subject, which has not yet been treated upon, and in which I perceive there is matter for magnificent elaboration: Utraque Manus in Benedicendo Clericis Inferioribus Necessaria Est.” At the sound of Latin, d’Artagnan made a sudden movement that looked as if he was about to jump to his feet and dash out of the room. He didn’t, and I raised my eyebrows in incredulous amusement.

I shall not bore you with theologising as I bored him. For despite my best efforts of involving him in our interesting, fierce and, I daresay, productive debate, our company didn’t appear to afford him much pleasure. In fact, when I cast a glance at him, I saw him gaping enough to split his jaw. Always mindful of the needs and wants of my friends, I turned to the Jesuit and said mildly, “Let us speak French, my father. Monsieur d’Artagnan will enjoy our conversation better.”

To my eternal chagrin, d’Artagnan did not appreciate my attempt to accommodate his needs. He perked up for a moment when the Jesuit accused me of ‘desiring the devil’. For the most part, however, he oscillated between open-mouthed stupor and vicious gnawing of nails, which didn’t cease until my ecclesiastic tutors took leave. “Till tomorrow, rash youth,” the Jesuit said to me. “You promise to become one of the lights of the Church. Heaven grant that this light prove not a devouring fire.”

I cast my eyes down, blushing becomingly as mildness and modesty crept upon my countenance. I conducted my reverend guests downstairs and walked slowly back to the door, clutching my heart. I wondered if the hole within would ever heal. I forced my mouth into a bland smile and went back in.

D’Artagnan looked at me askance without saying a word. We kept an embarrassed silence at first, but after a while it became necessary for one of us to break it, and it was my duty as host to entertain my visitor. “You see that I am returned to my fundamental ideas,” I told him.

He was incredulous, accused me of jesting and refused to listen to my elucidations of death as the gate to perdition or to salvation. His mundane mind turned to food, and he informed me that he was devilishly hungry.

I was the paragon of politeness. “We will dine directly, my friend.” But I was also the paragon of piousness. “Only you must please to remember that this is Friday. Now, on such a day I can neither eat flesh nor see it eaten. If you can be satisfied with my dinner – it consists of cooked tetragones and fruits.”

“What do you mean by tetragones?” asked d'Artagnan uneasily.

“I mean spinach,” I explained gently. The expression of horror on his face was such that I took pity on him. “But on your account I will add some eggs, and that is a serious infraction of the rule – for eggs are meat, since they engender chickens.”

“This feast is not very succulent. But never mind, I will put up with it for the sake of remaining with you.”

Oh. That was surprisingly touching, and the hole in my heart gave a sudden throb. “I am grateful to you for the sacrifice,” I said, furrowing my brow and thinking that, perhaps, it was not all scheming and trickery; perhaps the boy did feel something akin to affection for me after all. I did therefore seek to console him with the prospect of reward in Heaven. “But if your body be not greatly benefitted by it, be assured your soul will.”

The bout of sudden and unexpected affection between us rendered me convivial, and I maintain that my decision to tell him about the circumstances under which I had quit the monastery and took to killing had nothing to do with the fact that I strived to prevent an outpouring of gasconades on his part. I told him, accordingly, of the old days, concealing time and place, when a young novice had been slain by a man whose wrath he had inadvertently stirred. I deemed it wise to skip that part of the narrative where the novice woke in a pool of his own blood, sucked in mouthfuls of the night air until he hit upon the trace of his murderer’s scent, and glided through the night on silent wings to the murderer’s bed. I did not tell him about the way the murderer’s blood burst from under his skin, saturated with bone-melting dread and with potent virility.

I did not tell him how I had slunk back to my monastery before cock-crow and how Popă Alexandru’s blood turned to vinegar in my mouth. ‘Simara’ – ‘Aramis’ he had sighed with his dying breath, invoking a demon and giving me the name that I bore to this day.

“You may understand that the moment has come for me to re-enter the bosom of the Church,” I concluded my tale, blaming the wound that d’Artagnan believed to be in my shoulder for my decision.

He dismissed my argument. “This wound? Bah, it is now nearly healed, and I am sure it is not that which gives you the most pain.”

“What, then?”

“You have one at heart, Aramis.” I gave a start and blushed, and he continued: “One deeper and more painful – a wound made by a woman.”

My eye kindled in spite of myself and I lowered my lashes to hide the treacherous gleam. Oh, how right the boy was - and how wrong! It was endlessly fascinating to watch d’Artagnan hit so close to the mark and yet miss completely. I was intrigued, I admit. Even my desire to put his blood to good use had faded.

“Ah, do not talk of such things, and suffer love pains? Vanitas vanitatum! According to your idea, then, my brain is turned. And for whom – for some grisette, some chambermaid with whom I have trifled in some garrison? Fie!” I had talked myself in a passion, feigning indignation about a trifle to divert his attention. But the young bloodhound had taken up a scent.

“Pardon, my dear Aramis, but I thought you carried your eyes higher.”

“Higher? And who am I to nourish such ambition? A poor musketeer, a beggar, an unknown, who hates servitude and finds himself ill-placed in the world!” I wished Athos could have seen my histrionics, for I believed they must have resembled those performed on English stages, in which he had so delighted during his Albion years. (Even though my understanding was that I should have worn a woman’s petticoats and face paint for maximum effect.)

“Aramis, Aramis!” d’Artagnan exclaimed, looking at me as if he doubted both my veracity and my sanity.

But I rode the stallion of eloquence and did not intend to stop at full gallop. “Dust I am, and to dust I return,” I declaimed dramatically, pressing my hand to my heart, where coldness lay like an ice chip in the hole torn by the musket ball. “Life is full of humiliations and sorrows. All the ties which attach him to life break in the hand of man, particularly the golden ties. Oh, my dear d’Artagnan," I continued, giving to my voice a slight tone of bitterness, “trust me! Conceal your wounds when you have any; silence is the last joy of the unhappy. Beware of giving anyone the clue to your griefs; the curious suck our tears as flies suck the blood of a wounded hart.” Athos would have been proud of me, for truth dripped from every word I uttered.

Just as I had almost succeeded in convincing d’Artagnan of my religious fervour and world-weariness, the cunning little cockerel pulled out a letter and waved it under my nose. I recognised the paper; I recognised the duchess’ coronet. I made a bound, seized it, read it, or rather devoured it, and the ice chip in my heart melted as rich red blood flooded into the hole within.

 _My beloved cousin-german,_ Marie wrote. _I am certain you will pardon my unpardonable silence upon learning that it was family business – as melancholy as the affair that called you to Rouen a few weeks ago – that had prevented me from writing sooner. All is now concluded. But alas! Ever since Cain slew his brother Abel, family has always been a volatile organism. Don’t be alarmed: nothing as dramatic as fratricide (or indeed any kind of -icide) has taken place under our roof, I assure you, and I trust that you and yours are in good health likewise. I regret that I have caused you so much worry and pain. But I trust that you’ve never suspected me of neglectful indifference or, worse, of deliberate malice. Nothing could be further from the truth. My love for you is unshaken and unshakable._

_It is a great shame indeed that the ties that bind you and me together are not as reliable as the ties that bind you to your god. You have told me that you always feel his divine presence in your heart (It was your heart, was it not?), even when he, as is his divine prerogative, does not manifest himself before you in his corporeal form. Your devotion was once drowned out and you suffered a lapse of faith, but you found him again, and found your faith restored._

_Do not lose your faith, René. You have become the man that you are because of your love for your god, which guides and sustains you. Seek comfort in prayer and then seek **him** , for you know you can find him again._

_Don’t forget me over your theological studies, dear cousin. My business will detain me in Tours for the next months, but the time will come that I will have to send to my favourite linen draper for new supplies – and who knows, I may even make the journey myself to inspect the merchandise up close._

_I kiss your black eyes,  
Your devoted cousin Marie Michon._

Hot red blood boiled in my veins. It cascaded through my body and into my heart, melting the ice chip and filling the cold void. “Thanks, d'Artagnan, thanks!” I cried, almost in a state of delirium. Oh, Marie! How did you always find the right words to pour hope and comfort into my heart? You had been my beacon of light ever since you had found me lifeless on the Aegean shores and liberated me from the clutches of death. “She was forced to return to Tours; she is not faithless; she still loves me!” I exclaimed. “Come, my friend, come, let me embrace you. Happiness almost stifles me!”

I didn’t even care that it was d’Artagnan who had brought me the news from Marie. I flung myself into his arms and twirled him around in a dance around the venerable St. Chrysostom, kicking about the sheets of my thesis, which had fallen on the floor. Let the Gascon think what he wanted about my frenzied joy. He fancied himself quite the Hermes. Less naked than the Patron of Thieves, last time I saw him, but just as cunning. Athos was right, as always: the boy was worth keeping.

Night came, and with her came doubts. I had read and re-read Marie’s letter many times, and each time my heart gave a jolt that sent a rush of blood and heat to my head. Marie had reminded me of something of which I had lost sight in my dejected gloom: Athos was alive, I sensed him still. I had never stopped sensing him, which meant that he had not gone to England with d’Artagnan, for our connection got severed when we were separated by the sea.

Athos was alive. I closed my eyes and emptied my mind of anything but him. I felt him, a faint flicker of divine light deep behind my eyelids.

Athos was alive, and he had not come for me.

Blackness enveloped me as I lay dead in my grave. Black flesh on my bones, black soil in my mouth. Black beetles crawling into my eyes, eating me from the inside. I woke with a gasp, choking for air. Cold air poured in from the window as if from an open tomb. My heart hurt again, as if the warm blood had drained from it. My fingers fumbled for the letter under my pillow, but it was too dark to read it. I pressed it to my lips and inhaled the scent of Marie’s perfume. I longed to close her in my arms. It was over two months since I had last felt her body against mine.

I hadn’t held Athos in my arms in three weeks. Would I hold him again tomorrow? I could not imagine it. He had not returned to me, even though I had asked him to. D’Artagnan had told me that Athos had been accused of being a coiner of bad money. He had probably got himself arrested, _again_ , and was locked up in a prison cell somewhere, languishing happily in the gloom and the dark. Waiting for me to come and rescue him.

No. No, he did not want me to rescue him. Memories of that dreadful night in Fort L’Évêque resurfaced: his face a frozen mask; his eyes not his own. My heart clenched around the hole within, sucking the icy cold back in. I could not bear it.

When d’Artagnan set off the next morning in search for Athos, I did not join him. My wound was still giving me trouble. I had leapt into the saddle of my new steed with my usual grace and agility, but after a few vaults and curvets of the noble animal, I felt my pains come on so insupportably that I turned pale and became unsteady in my seat. D’Artagnan sprang toward me, helped me dismount and assisted me to my chamber.

I cursed the Gascon’s good luck. I cursed Athos and his whole family. Had all this happened, because Athos had fucked his sister three thousand years ago? I considered myself a vengeful man, but even I would be willing to forgive a transgression after three thousand years. Probably.

I thought of d’Artagnan and the tricks he employed to pull our strings. His attempts to keep my secret secret from me was amusing, but it was also disquieting. Perhaps I underestimated him. Perhaps he was not as oblivious as I thought. He had seen all the clues, surely he could not have failed to put them together? Why did he pretend he wasn’t aware of my involvement in the affair if not for nefarious purposes?

I had let him ride away alone to meet Athos. I groaned and clutched my heart. Athos, that most honourable and noble nature, would find himself at the mercy of a trickster and schemer, and there was nothing I could do to protect him.

I wished I had drained d’Artagnan dry. It should have been me, not him, riding to Athos today. It should be me, not him, freeing Athos from his prison.

Alas, my body was still too frail to attempt the journey. In order to cheer myself up, I invited the curate of Montdidier and the superior of the Jesuits of Amiens to dinner the next day, and had the landlady serve her capital wine. I did my best to make them drunk, and I smiled at them my most amiable smile, showing all my teeth. My affability rendered the expected results: the curate forbade me to quit my uniform, and the Jesuit entreated me to get him made a musketeer.

I sampled both ecclesiastics after they had passed out. They woke with heavy heads and leaden limbs, and I thanked them most charmingly for their company and their assistance. Even though I had found their spiritual guidance wanting, they had been competent enough (albeit insipid) to help me regain my physical equilibrium. It was for that reason why I had given almost my last sou to those two worthy men when we said adieu in the morning. For they had done me no harm, and I deemed it only right to repay them for both repast and rebirth.

 

***

In the sepulchral tenebrosity of the cellar, I had become half-bat myself. My eyes had grown so accustomed the darkness that I no longer needed my sense of touch to lead me to the bottles. One after another they emptied down my gullet. I lay on the floor, losing track of days, my time measured only in each attempt my jailor-innkeeper made to penetrate the fortress in which I had barricaded myself.

Grimaud, who had at first afforded himself the cover of the murkiness in order to gesticulate obscenities at me, no longer found safety in the gloom, as I could read his signs now perfectly with my bat-eyes from my position on the floor.

“I’m going to kill you so very much and until you die from it,” I drawled out.

“I know how much you enjoy playing these confinement love games with your flittermouse,” he snarked, “but he’s not coming for you, as you very well see.”

“Nor I for him,” I laughed. He had asked me to come back for him at Crèvecoeur. His pale, exsanguinated face, loomed accusingly in the periphery of my memory. “Oh god, Aramis!” I cried out as a sharp pain gnawed at my insides. I should probably have eaten more of the sausages and not drank quite so much on an empty stomach.

“Be a man, Kyrios.”

“Shut up, gnat! Or I shall toss you back out to be finished off by those so-called stable-hands.”

“They’re long gone, the vile dissemblers,” Grimaud stood over me and cocked his head to the side, contemplating the depths to which I had apparently sunk in his disrespectful eyes.

“What if he’s dead?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t know what else can kill him. He’s never been shot in the heart before. What if…” I couldn’t even think it. It was easier to think that he did not care, that he was alive and well and disregarding me completely, rather than picture him dead and buried, in the ground, wormfood. _From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell_ , as it were.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” my impudent familiar suddenly recited, as if reading into my thoughts. “Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds, nor bends for the remover to remove.”

“Grimaud, I swear by my Father’s cock, I am going to beat you for a century!” How dare that little Olympian shit quote Shakespeare at me! I made an effort to get up, so that I could make good on my promise, but my head spun and I fell back onto my haunches. As if to complete my misery, Grimaud laughed at me.

“Oh no, it is an ever-fixèd mark, that looks on tempest and is never shaken!” he mocked me with the Bard’s words.

“I’ve never hated anyone more than I hate you at this moment,” I said.

“Not even the Rohan nymph?”

I reached out for my next bottle of wine.

“Would now be a good time to talk to you about our linen situation, Kyrios?”

By the time d’Artagnan had arrived to extract me from my fortifications, I was woefully close to being out of provisions. Not that it would have killed me, mind you, but without sausages I would only have had Grimaud to gnaw on. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded biting a few pieces off, starting with his impertinent tongue and then all his equally insolent fingers. As for the wine, well, my good host’s cries of desperation were a balm to my ravaged soul and ears once he beheld all that was left.

Our accounts, such as they were, settled, with d’Artagnan disposing of my horse (I suppose I should never had named the steed after an Ottoman Sultan, but the irony had appealed to me at the time) as if it was his own, I could finally ask what had been on the tip of my tongue since my emergence from my self-imposed imprisonment.

“Tell me what’s become of…,” I swallowed, craving more of that wine, “the others.”

I sat there, listening to some cockamamey story of Porthos’ apparent ‘sprain’ which made me really work at controlling my facial expressions and finally, after what felt like an eternity, he had told me of how he had found Aramis. Alive and well, and apparently upon the precipice of taking his vows. The innkeeper could not have come at a better time with more wine and charcuterie reinforcements.

So, Aramis had found Jesus again, did he? I ground my teeth together and clenched my fingers around the bottle of wine. Allusions were made, aspersions cast, for d’Artagnan did not fail to mention a certain letter that he had been proud to deliver and which he claimed had dispelled all thoughts in Aramis’ brain of becoming a Jesuit again. Bile rose higher and higher in my throat and I chased it down with my host’s wine.

“And how did you leave him?”

“In good spirits, my dear friend, and professing the intent to compose verses. He was eager to come seek you out with me, but his wound prevented him from traveling.”

His wound still bothered him after two weeks? My heart clenched as my fingers unclenched around the wine. He was still in pain. What had he been thinking… not drinking blood, consorting with Jesuits? If he thought to torment me more, there had not been a need for I was already tormented enough.

“And the damnedest thing? He had been self-flagellating, dear Athos. No, I do not mean that as hyperbole. He even showed me the flagellum he had applied to that practice.”

I winced. My flagrum. I had never taken it back from him, for what need had I of it when he had always wielded it so finely.

“Only Aramis would try to cure the blow of a blunderbuss with the blows of a whip!”

“Very good,” I said, refilling our glasses, for I had had quite enough talk of Aramis and his self-flagellation. “Here’s to Porthos and Aramis,” I raised my glass and let it cling against the Gascon’s. I needed to change the topic, so I inquired as to how my young hero had been doing himself. I found he had an ominous look about him, no doubt the Parisien den of intriguers had caused him the loss of sleep.

It did not take much prodding, for though I was in my cups I still had the gift to induce others to gab. He went on to tell of his burgeoning love affair with Mme. Bonacieux, foiled at the very point of potential consummation. I almost pitied his unfulfilled erections. Almost.

“That’s all trifles,” I said, “mere trifles!” He fancied himself in love, ha! With a woman he had known for all of half an hour, give or take. The woman for whom he had gotten Aramis shot and caused Porthos to develop a ‘sprain’. She had probably just run off by herself, possibly staging her own abduction. She was consorting with the nymph, surely that was a ruse the wily Rohan was more than capable of carrying off.

“You always say ‘trifles!’ my dear Athos,” the boy whined. Did I? Well, I always spoke more or less the truth, so yes, it was entirely possible. “It doesn’t suit you, who have never been in love.”

I felt my blood rush to my loins and my eyes may have reflected my inner fire. Yes - I. Never been in love. He who had known me for all of six months and had never seen me with a mistress (yet who had walked in on me mid-congress with my demonic lover), he who surely could see into the deepest, darkest depths of my immortal soul, he had decided I had never been in love. Because he had never observed me act upon it.

“That’s true,” I said as calmly as I could. “I have never been in love.”

That lie stung my lips. I wondered that the Gods did not turn my mouth to stone for speaking such blasphemies. For as much as I loathed Aramis at this very moment, it was nothing if not a reflection of how desperately, hopelessly, pathetically in love I had been with him. How much I loved him still.

“So you see very well,” my young interlocutor proceeded, sinking dagger after dagger into my soul, “you heart of stone, that you’re wrong to be hard on those of us who are tenderhearted.”

I suddenly understood Aramis’ desire to murder him.

“Tenderhearted is brokenhearted,” I said. My eyes clouded over and I remembered the first night when I realized that I was in love with Aramis, and that one day it would kill me. My hand trembled and I put the glass down lest I spilled the wine.

“What are you saying?” d’Artagnan asked, suddenly piercing through my wine-induced fog.

“I’m saying that love is a lottery in which the one who wins, wins death!” It was only a matter of time, really. For only having tasted the fruits of his love could I have left myself vulnerable to the possibility of being heart-broken. “You’re very lucky to have lost, believe me, my dear d’Artagnan. And if I have one piece of advice to give you, it’s to go on losing.” And to go away. My Gods, I wanted to kill him.

“She seemed to love me so much!”

“She seemed to.”

“Oh, she did love me!”

His mistress of half-hour who used him, nay used all of us, as a pawn in her scheme! Loved him!

“Child!” I exploded. “There’s no man who hasn’t believed, like you, that his… _mistress_ loved him, and there’s no man whose mistress hasn’t deceived him.”

“Except you, Athos, who have never had one.”

Discord must have been standing behind me this whole time, for I could verily feel her seizing me by the hair. I sank my nails into my palms until they bled, attempting to calm my breath, to soothe my raging heart. What would Aramis think if I… if I… my eye traveled to my sword, then back to d’Artagnan’s face, who was still looking at me with that air of naive superiority. So, he had not only deemed me impotent but also a virgin, did he?

“That’s true,” I finally squeezed out after a prolonged silence, “I’ve never had one. Let’s drink!” This _lying_ that Aramis constantly engaged in, it was so very uncomfortable and unbecoming that my tongue barely turned inside my own mouth.

And still, the young fool insisted on being consoled for his ‘unhappiness.’ And how could I, who had been more unhappy than most of late, give him comfort when only moments ago I wanted to slash his throat with my poniard? Still, he was young and looked to me for counsel, in all sincerity, even if his judgement was clouded with his own perceived troubles.

It occurred to me that I did have a cautionary tale for him, after all. A tale of an angel who had turned out to be a demon. Or had she been a demon all along? I could not very well tell him about Aramis, but I could tell him about Olivier’s Anne.

“A friend of mine - not I, but a friend of mine, you understand!” I began to recount. I could still remember the phantasmagoric tale quite well. I even used some of the comte de La Fère’s own phrasing in the retelling of it. ‘As beautiful as love itself,’ yes that worked very well for my own beloved, for having seen Aphrodite, I could truthfully say that Aramis would have given her stiff competition for Discord’s apple, especially if I were to judge the contest instead of Paris. ‘A mind not of a woman, but of a poet,’ very good, so far so flittermouse, ‘she did not please, she intoxicated.’ As I had been intoxicated once, as I still was, helpless against the touch of him who ruled me, even from afar. I was getting so caught up in the tale of my … friend’s…Delilah, that I had not noticed how animated the story had made me. D’Artagnan listened to me with rapt attention, leaning in ever closer so as not to miss a single droned out word, for I had been as drunk as de La Fère had been the night he had shared this tale with me in London.

“Guess what she had on her shoulder, d’Artagnan?” I said, laughing as I recalled the count’s horror.

“How should I know?”

“A fleur-de-lis. She was branded!” I sank the glass of wine in one gulp.

“Horrible!” he cried. “What are you telling me?”

“The truth,” I reached for more wine only to find the last bottle empty. “My dear, the angel was a demon. The poor girl had been a thief.” Poor girl indeed. She did marry a right bastard, after all. I paused and reflected upon it again, this time from the count’s perspective. _My_ perspective.

“And what did the count do?”

I froze for a moment and my mind flew back to Aramis. What did the count do? Why he had handed her over to his valets to be hanged (or not hanged, as it were) from a tree. I remember telling him, back then, never to let a servant do the master’s job. I pictured Aramis in her place this time, swinging by the neck from a tree. He too would not have died from it, my demon who had once been my angel.

“The count,” I spoke from somewhere deep inside me, a place where I was afraid to go to in my dreams, the place where Aramis was not safe from harm, “was a great lord, he had the right to render low and high justice on his lands: he finished tearing off the countess’ clothes, tied her hands behind her back, and hanged her from a tree.”

“Good heavens, Athos, a murder!” my young companion cried, echoing my own words from years ago. I could not contradict him.

I could not sleep at all the following night, so terrified was I of having that nightmare again. _Kill him, Athos, kill him._

 

***

Porthos was, in many ways, the smartest one among us. He had put his newly acquired horse to excellent use by selling it and using the money to order a meal that was just about sufficient for the four of us. D’Artagnan, full of youthful energy and unquenchable vitality, had contrived to lure Athos out of the gloom of his cellar and back on the road. They had both come to collect me in Crèvecoeur, where I experienced, perhaps for the first time in my life, _embarrassment_ : I avoided Athos’ eye and talked of poetry and of entering the Church. Once again, Athos proved to be the greater man, for he followed me inside the inn when I regulated my affairs. I froze when I suddenly felt him stand next to me, and then his voice sounded by my ear and tingled down my spine: “I’m glad you’re alive.”

I didn’t say anything, for all I wanted to do was throw myself in his arms and cling to that beautiful body that I so missed. I glanced at him instead and our eyes locked. His were ebony black with emotion.

The three of us went to collect Porthos next. Our Titanic friend had ordered an excellent dinner with his horse-money, and the wine flowed abundantly. There was a lot of talk about money (we had none) and even more talk about the meat and wine that we devoured hungrily. Porthos, in excellent mood, engaged in boisterous caprioles, calling for more wine, even though we had drunk enough to power a company of Swiss guards for a week. When I pointed out discreetly that we still had to make our way back to Paris, Athos' cousin waved a massive hand dismissively, almost knocking over the bottles.

“Careful!” Athos caught a bottle in mid-fall. “Don’t waste it!”

“Ah! My dear cousin!” Porthos exclaimed. I shook my head and looked pointedly at d’Artagnan whose strong constitution had allowed him to drink twice as much as any of us and who now enjoyed a gallant and heroic slumber with his face nestled in his empty plate.

“He doesn’t hear anything,” Porthos waved his hand again and Athos jumped to the rescue of wine receptacles. “And don’t worry, Athos, son of Zeus.” He was slurring slightly, and I wondered how potent that wine had been. “I will not waste this nectar that is worthy of the gods themselves. May they long live and prosper.” I shook my head again at those words and Porthos added: “Those heathen deities don’t hold a candle to our Lord Joshua. I mean Jesus. Ave Jesus!” He saluted smartly and I crossed myself pointedly. “All that they are good for are menial tasks. Like my Da, all he ever did was ride across the skies in his chariot. But not anymore. They say the sun is a ball of gas that is suspended in the middle of the universe and around which we flutter like moths around a candle.” He reached across to Athos and wrapped his huge hand around Athos’ wrist. “Things were easier in the old days,” he said, his words underpinned with a melancholia that I’d never heard in his voice before. “Don’t you sometimes wish that the One God had not exiled Chronos into the otherworld?” Athos and I exchanged a look. Seeing Porthos in such a dejected mood was disconcerting.

“The old gods are still around,” Athos ventured. I grimaced. Yes, they were. He would know.

“To the old gods!” Porthos said, pouring his wine over the patch of grass by his bench. “To their strength and courage! They used to talk to me, you know,” he added, rather sadly. “The One God does not talk to me. I go to Mass and I celebrate his rebirth. I sing the songs – and beautiful songs they are! I admire the pictures. His minions have their cocks out in many of them, like your brothers, Athos. And the holy ladies show their breasts a lot.” Porthos sighed and took another sip – or rather: gulp of wine. “Sometimes I wish they walked the Earth again. My Da and Chronos, arm in arm, brothers-in-arms, making life easier for us to bear.” He sighed again. “I miss the sun,” he confessed. “I wish it were spring again.” And with those words, he poured the rest of his wine onto the grass by his feet.

The world around us burst open. It was just a fraction of a second, but Athos and I both felt it. A gust of smoke, a hint of sulphur, a breeze that carried the promise of years to come. Porthos frowned, but he didn’t say anything, and we all continued our meal in silence. Its remains were abandoned to Messieurs Mousqueton, Bazin, Planchet, and Grimaud.

We were on our way back, more or less steady in our saddles, when I turned back. Blinking against the sun, I noticed a female figure gliding across the field. I thought I discerned flowers in her hair, and when I blinked again, she had disappeared in the shadows.

Back in Paris, Athos and I looked at each other. The scent of linden trees in bloom. The narcissi by the wayside. The skein of geese against the cloudless sky, flying north.

I turned to Athos, whose lips were pursed in disapproval. “It’s spring, isn’t it?” I said.

“It would appear so,” he said.

“It was October when I woke up this morning.”

“It’s April now.” His voice was infused with all the sorrows of the Old World.

“Your family,” I shook my head in exaggerated exasperation. “What a bunch of magnificent blunderers.”

“Persephone is not a blunderer,” he defended his sister. I looked at him askance, but didn’t ask if he fucked her as well. Athos didn’t have a sense of humour when it came to those matters.

“Perhaps not,” I said. “But Porthos is your cousin, and he’s quite the blunderer. It was he, wasn’t it? He invoked the old gods and poured out his wine on a patch of asphodel, don’t think I didn’t see that. The herb of the underworld. It covers the haunt of the dead and Persephone wears it in her hair. _When she walks the Earth as harbinger of spring._ ”

Athos sighed. “You’re angry.” He sounded resigned.

“No indeed!” I said. “I don’t mind that we skipped winter. The cold air doesn’t agree with my hair. And anyway,” I added with a side glance at Athos. “It’s only about six months we skipped, not thirty years like on Olympus.”

His head snapped up and his eyes locked with mine. “You know,” he whispered.

“Of course I know,” I shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “I was there, remember?”

“You never said.” He was still looking at me and I perceived fear in his eyes.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It was a long time ago.” I leaned across in my saddle and reached for his hand.

“Aramis,” he whispered again.

“It’s all right,” I reiterated, pressing his hand.

Porthos and d’Artagnan rode off to their own lodgings once we reached the quarter of the Luxembourg, but I followed Athos to his. After two weeks of separation, it was the natural thing to do. A letter from M. de Treville awaited him there, informing him that it was his Majesty’s fixed intention to open the campaign on the first of May, and he must immediately prepare his outfit. We knew that a similar letter had been sent to my lodgings, and apprehension crept into our souls and faces.

“Aramis,” Athos said under his breath, holding the letter out to me. “The date. Look at the date.”

I looked. “April 10th, 1627.” I raised my eyes to his. “We’ve skipped one year and a half? Your family really are incompetent morons.” We stared at each other for a heartbeat, and then Athos grinned, and I started to laugh. Our shared mirth lifted the grey veil that hung between us. I clasped Athos’ arm and pressed my forehead to his shoulder, shaking with silent laughter, and his hand alighted on my hip. I felt its heat even through the belts and the layers of clothes, and it sobered me.

“Athos,” I said in a quiet voice and felt him tense. What had happened to us? Every word I addressed to him filled him with apprehension, as if he expected me to hurt him. I was sick of hurting him. “You need a bath,” I told him.

“Are you telling me I-” his tone was defensive and I interjected quickly.

“I am telling you you need a bath,” I said, switching from the formal “vous” that we were forced to use in public to the “tu” of our bedroom. “And I want to share it with you.”

A pause, his chest heaved, and then he stepped away from me and tore open the door. “Grimaud!”

“Did you really lock yourself up in a cellar for two weeks?” I asked into his damp hair. Seated between my legs, he lay back against my chest, and steam rose around us. Like Prometheus, Grimaud must have stolen fire from the gods to heat so much water in so short a time.

“I’m sorry,” Athos said. I dug my fingers into his shoulder and rubbed the rigid muscle.

“No, no, don’t apologise.” My lips slid down the familiar line of his neck and his skin shivered. “I… am glad, actually. It’s so _you_.” I kissed the place where neck met shoulder and felt arousal unfold within his body.

“You’re glad that I didn’t go to England with d’Artagnan,” Athos said, invoking the name of the Gascon with the air of a man probing a hole in his tooth to ascertain the level of pain.

“I am,” I admitted. “But, Athos-”

“Aramis!” he said. “You have nothing to worry of on that account. I am not going to bed that boy.”

“It’s not that.” I wrapped my arm around his chest and felt his heart pound under my wrist. “It’s not jealousy, Athos, not like that. It’s just…” I sighed and pressed my forehead to his damp skin. “I really don’t like him,” I confessed. “He rubs me up the wrong way. I don’t trust him, either. I worry all the time that he’ll find out.”

“He won’t.” Athos lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my palm. “And if he does, you have my permission to eat him.”

“You really mean that?”

“I really mean that.” I felt him smile even though I didn’t see his face. “A healthy snack for chyortik.”

My healed heart thudded against my ribcage. I loved him so much in that moment I could have sobbed. Instead, I pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck, licking the vein that filled with blood for me, and said: “I am liking him much better now than I used to. You were right, he is quite amusing, and occasionally useful. I shall endeavour to focus on his good qualities and stop being horrible to him – not that he’s noticed.” Athos’ vein throbbed under my tongue, and I added in a low voice: “For you.”

“I wanted to kill him,” Athos said, voice vibrating with something I couldn’t quite read. Laughter, perhaps. “After I left that cellar. He was so… _stupid_. I thought I couldn’t bear it.”

“Are you saying we _should_ kill him?”

“No. I’m saying I understand where you’re coming from. He can be infuriating. When he gets something into his head and doesn’t see anything but what he wants to see. When he’s convinced he’s right, even though he is wrong. When he’s so fixated on a goal he slays everything left and right, because all that matters is that he reaches his end.”

“Self-righteous, I think is the word you’re looking for.”

“Look who’s casting the first stone.”

“Ah, but I’m aware that this is a failing of mine, my love. I repent. I confess. I atone. Your Gascon pet is conceited.”

“And avaricious.”

“And you are determined to apply corrective measures?”

Athos shrugged and twisted in my arms. “He’s young. Not all is lost yet.” He ended up kneeling between my legs, face to face with me, and his cock bumped gently into mine in the water. “What now?” he breathed.

“First, we should change the subject.” I put my hand on his and dragged my fingers up his arm, watching the trail of goosebumps erupting behind them.

“Consider it done.”

“And then you should lie flat on your back.” I slid my hands round the curve of his shoulders and down his breast. His breath caught when my palms passed over his nipples. “Because I don’t think you’re up to much more than that, old man.”

He smiled his ancient smile and my head spun. His gaze dropped to my chest, to where the fresh scar shone pink against my lily-white skin. “Are _you_ up to it?” The pad of his finger alighted gently beneath the scar, tracing its outline.

I grinned up at him, showing him all my teeth. “What do you think?”

Flat on his back between my spread thighs, Athos was panting, hips jerking up in small desperate thrusts as I held him in place. His cock buried deep in my mouth and the taste of the ocean on my tongue. We had left a trail of water and mayhem on our way to the bed and my teeth hadn’t even pierced his skin yet. I was splayed above him, my mouth on him, and his face buried in my groin. His hands on the back of my thighs, travelling up and down, his touch firm and confident, and he knew exactly where to touch me to make my whole body jolt into his. I groaned around his cock and he flicked his tongue over my balls. The water drops trapped between our bodies were boiling, scorching our skin, and I lifted myself off to breathe. But Athos was having none of that. His masterful hands pulled me back down, fingers digging into the muscles of my arse; he was spreading me with his thumbs, with his mouth, and his slick tongue slid over my hole.

I moaned and let go of his cock. “Fuck, Athos,” I panted, overwhelmed with the sensation of his beautiful lips and tongue probing me. He hummed against my flesh.

“Go on, Aramis.” His voice was a filthy murmur. “Suck me.” He forced the tip of his tongue up my arsehole and my bones dissolved. I collapsed above him, with a groan that turned into a whimper. His hand on my spine, nails skipping over my vertebrae, and then he slapped my flank. “I want to come in your mouth.” Another shove of his tongue, deeper and filthier than the first, and he pulled back and bit into the meat of my arse. “You can drink my blood after you’ve drunk my spunk.”

My own cock dragged over his chest, leaving sticky imprints in the hairs there. I sucked Athos back in, all the way, so deep it hurt. His thigh vein throbbed beneath my hand, calling out to me. His cock throbbed in my throat and his tongue pumped in and out my arse as he fucked me with his mouth. I tilted my head and bit down on the sides of his cock. A strangled curse between my legs, his hand crawling towards my cock, curling his fist for me to fuck. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, pulling in desperate breaths through my nose, focusing on the scent and taste of his arousal, on the way his cock swelled and thrust, filling my mouth.

Sudden cold hit my skin; then, Athos’ hot breath expelled in a groan, my name spilling from his lips as he spilled himself into my throat. The tight ring of heat around my chest, like the hoop around a barrel, red flakes before my eyes as my vision blurred. I swallowed everything, lapping at his wet cock, kissing the crease between hip and thigh as I moved further down. A flick of my tongue called the vein in his thigh to the surface. I pressed my palm gently against the inside of his thigh, his legs opened for me, and his skin tore under the pressure of my fangs. The potion of the gods spurted into my mouth, and I clamped my lips around his flesh so as not to lose a drop of the precious essence. I had barely taken three sips and my body gave up, plunging from the precipice upon which I’d been balancing into the abyss of our love. I had come with his blood in my mouth for the first time in months, my body jerking and shaking into his helplessly, and I groaned when his tongue slipped out of me. His strong hands on me, motioning me down, and we both crawled across the mattress to wrap ourselves around one another.

Athos flattened his palm over my heart. “The scar,” he whispered. “It’s faded.”

“It’s healed,” I whispered back and pressed my lips to his damp, sated skin. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, the magical skip from October 1625 to April 1627 is completely canonical. Alex, we figured out what happened there! You're welcome, Alex.


	5. The Rape of Milady

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter includes mentions of non-con. But it's canonical non-con, both _Three Musketeers_ canon and our canon. And, unlike Dumas, we take a firm stance against it.

**April, 1627**

Spring again. The sudden burst of linden trees in bloom nauseated me. Much as we amused ourselves by Persephone’s confusion and Porthos’ unintentional propitiation, I was vexed at having taken part in propelling the earth a year and a half into the future and right into the very omphalos of April.

It had been April when I had followed him to Snagov.

The smell of the linden trees pursued me all the way to those sixty bottles of Rioja I had brought from Crèvecoeur. And then I had refused to leave the house entirely. I would have to pace myself, of course. I had a whole fifteen days until I had to either magically fund my campaign to La Rochelle, on which we were to embark in two weeks to fight the Huguenots and the Duke of Buckingham, (perhaps there was some way to propitiate Tyche into showering me with gold - on the other hand, my Father had ruined showers of gold for me long ago) or go out and do what I had ostensibly threatened, i.e. fake my own death by dueling.

It might not have been the worst idea. Perhaps I had been a musketeer for too long. Come to think of it, the air in France clearly did not agree with Porthos. Could I induce him into running away with me to Northern Africa, or maybe even to the New Indies?

No, but I couldn’t leave _him_ , not even to save myself from that inevitable heartbreak that my Grigori needlessly nagged me about. I had been elated to find Aramis alive again, despite the letter from the nymph, despite the demonstrative talk of cantos, despite his eyes that looked right through me as he spoke of other things. When we had finally been left alone together, his lips against my own, his fingers pressed tightly into the grooves between my ribs, a silent promise that meant more than all his uttered lies, I was undone again.

Yes, we had found each other again, his touch lifting me out of my apathy for as long as he was there, lying at my side. The nymph was gone and he was all mine and I melted and cooled against him like hot lava hitting the ocean’s surface. There were moments of such exquisite joy that I felt myself truly happy again. 

And then the darkness would descend upon me to reclaim my mind and not even his light could chase it away. He was mine again, but perhaps only “temporarily” as he had been temporarily a musketeer, and he could get his outfit however he deemed fit. I had my wine and my solitude.

Well, I would have had my solitude had d’Artagnan not taken it upon himself to turn my abode into some sort of a confessional of his most gross improprieties. One moment he was professing to me the love of the laundress, the next he was chasing some English baroness. His heartfelt declarations at one moment or another may as well have been the shouts of my dearly departed parrot, vacillating wildly between “Ave Jesus!” and “Grilled Octopus!”

He was young, and I humored him the best I could, although I often found his behavior to be abominable. Thankfully, his knack for rudeness had garnered us a duel with some Englishmen, which promised to be diverting, and I had been looking forward to killing one ever since my sojourn in the British Isles was cut short by my unexpected resurrection as Olivier de La Fère. I had killed my Englishman too, after I had given him the count's name as my own. I was sure Aramis would have appreciated the irony of it, he who lied and dissembled as easily as other men breathed.

This Englishwoman, this Milady the Gascon had been chasing (one might even say stalking), I had tried to dissuade him from pursuing her, but to no avail.

"My dear, I distrust women - what do you want, I've paid for it!” Oh, had I ever! “And above all blond women.” Wasn’t the Rohan nymph blond? I thought Aramis had told me that once, in one of his moments of poorly timed honesty. “Didn't you say Milady is blond?"

He once and for all proved my adage that people only asked you for advice so as to not follow it. At least he could not blame me later for he always did the opposite of what I’d suggested. The baroness, the soubrette, the laundress, good Lord! - my head spun. Any day now he would surpass Aramis for number of conquests in a single week. I frowned, I drank, I mostly thought of how very much I wanted him to vacate my house so that he wouldn’t run into my lover on the stairwell. Then again, if anyone knew how to play cat and mouse, it was my Wallachian bat.

In fact, d’Artagnan had just missed Aramis leaving my bedroom that morning, for we had allowed ourselves to tarry. Ever since that awful night in Amiens, I knew all the more that I could not trust myself to fall asleep in his arms, and yet, I could not bring myself to part with him. And so I stayed awake, tracing the outlines of his body with my tongue and my fingers until he was the one who fell asleep in my bed, sated and spent, and I had not the heart to move him.

Imagine my distaste then, when sleep-deprived yet drunk on my own beloved’s scent, I had to listen to the Gascon tell tales of ignominious deceptions disguised as glorious conquests. He had impersonated that woman’s lover (a lover whom he incidentally left for dead in Calais with four sword thrusts) to gain her favor and slid in under the cover of night. And what’s worse, he was now sporting a talisman which I had very little doubt was a trophy of this violation. Like my Father with Europa, Leda, and so many others, he had carried her off in the guise of another. As I told him of my disapproval of his actions, I could not take my eyes off the ring on his finger. It struck me as familiar, and I had attempted to catalogue my thoughts to see whether I could glean where I may have seen it before.

“You’re looking at this ring?” 

I couldn’t quite place it, yet I was certain that I recognized it. And yet, how was it possible? D’Artagnan had claimed to have received it from Milady (my suspicion of it as the trophy of his misbegotten lechery was confirmed), and I had never met this Englishwoman in my life. And did d’Artagnan just say he believed she was French?

“Show me the ring,” I said, taking the sapphire into my hands and staring at it as if to compel the bauble to reveal its secrets.

When suddenly, a flash illuminated my mind: I knew where I had seen the ring. On the portrait of Adèle de Bragelonne (later, the comtesse de La Fère) at my great-uncle’s château. Could it be? I slid the jewel over the ring finger of my left hand, where for a while I had worn the count’s signet ring. It went onto my finger as if it had been made for it. 

How could it be? Was this some kind of vengeance that de La Fère wreaked upon me from beyond the grave? No, no, it was impossible.

“It can’t possibly be the same,” I said. “How could that ring wind up in the hands of Milady Clarick?” Could it be? Was d’Artagnan’s Milady actually Olivier’s Anne? “And yet,” I spoke aloud, still thinking of the portrait of the comtesse de La Fère, “it’s hardly likely that two jewels could be so much alike.” Unless the portrait lied. I only had my own conjectures to fall back upon.

“You know this ring?” the young violator asked.

“I thought I recognized it,” I replied, “but no doubt I’m mistaken.” Besides, what did it matter? Olivier’s Anne was no concern of mine, no matter what name she wore in this day. I handed the ring back to d’Artagnan but a sudden rising of bile gave me pause. It sickened me to see it in his hands: a ring he had taken from the woman he had violated without even her knowledge, a ring intended for another.

I asked him to take it off or turn the stone away, blaming my admittedly odd behavior on cruel memories rendering me incapable of conversing with him. A thought occurred to me, I know not whence, that I should claim ownership of it after all, for if Milady and Anne de Breuil had been one and the same, then the ring was rightfully mine. Well, not rightfully, per se. But more so mine than his, who had taken it in the guise of another.

It did not sit right with me, his tale. It made my head hurt, and the ring provided a distraction from the ache. I took it back. I claimed it had been a gift to me from my mother, who had in turn received it from her own mother. (My Gods, this _lying_ , it was so taxing, I had no idea how Aramis managed it.) I claimed then to have given it to my Delilah as a token of love in a fit of passion. I really laid it on pretty thick all told, and the result of all my efforts was that the ring ended up in my friend’s pocket, and not upon his finger. 

This entire encounter had rendered me quite disappointed in him.

“You know that I love you, d’Artagnan,” I told him, taking his hand in mine, despite the fact that at that moment it made my skin crawl, “If I had a son, I couldn’t love him more than you.” Although I did once claim to have loved a parrot as if he were my son. “Give up that woman,” I begged of him. “I don’t know her, but a sort of intuition tells me that she’s a lost creature, and that there is something fatal in her.” 

He had promised then to break off with this Milady, this ghost from the comte de La Fère’s past (if that was even what she’d been), and quickly quit my residence. I watched him leave and then sank into one of my chairs, overcome with a sudden sense of exhaustion as if someone had sapped me of all strength. I gestured for Grimaud to bring me wine for I felt parched. My muscles ached and throbbed as if seized with fever. I did not comprehend what was happening to me.

“Should I fetch M. Aramis for you?” the Grigori asked, confirming my suspicion that I looked dreadful.

“No, no,” I waved him off. After all, I had just seen Aramis, and whatever this was that was taking hold of me - well, it would keep.

It occurred to me that it was probably just lack of sleep. I drained my wine glass, got up and stumbled to my bed where I fell, clutching at the pillows that still held my beloved’s intoxicating scent. I buried my face in them and descended into a deep and blessedly dreamless repose. I slept for what must have been over twelve hours, for when I awoke it was pitch dark, and Aramis was sitting on my bed, watching me.

***

“Do you believe that d’Artagnan plans to blackmail us?"

Athos’ phlegmatic languor served him well, for he didn’t so much as blink in confusion. “No,” he said, propping himself up in the pillows. “I do not.” He measured me with serious dark eyes. “He is a gentleman, Aramis.”

I shrugged. “So am I.”

“You never blackmailed anyone.”

“No, but I’ve done other things.”

“So has he.” Athos rolled his head back and stared up at the canopy. “So has he,” he muttered under his breath.

I grinned and crawled across the bed to sit by his side “What did he do?” Athos turned his head away and I reached out and touched my fingertips to the bare skin above the collar of his shirt. “Athos? _What_ did he do?”

He didn’t speak. He lay there, looking up without blinking. Everything inside me was boiling and rolling, galloping away with me, but I pressed down on it and didn’t stir, waiting for him to talk. That _calm_ of his. It was not the peace that I knew from days long gone. It was a dark, deep calm. It was a frozen lake. It was the marine abyss whence he had returned.

He spoke at last. “Nothing.” His chest heaved with a deep breath and he tore his gaze away from whatever spectres he had been perusing. “Trifles. He trifled with a woman.” Athos tried to look at me and failed. “It’s nothing.”

The deep dark calm of icy waters sloshed across the bed and swept over me. I felt my heart and head get cold. “Was it Mme Bonacieux?” I asked, even though I knew she wasn’t.

Athos shook his head.

 _He recovered from his deep and abiding love for his mistress quickly enough._ Did he expect me to say that? Did d’Artagnan’s trifling with another woman make Athos think of Marie and the way my love for her made me stray away from him? I cursed the Gascon. I cursed my promise to Athos that I wouldn’t do the boy any harm. Our lives would have been so much easier had my lover not insisted on getting himself a pet; one which attempted to parrot him in words and to ape him in deeds, but which lacked that nobility of head and heart that Athos possessed.

“Is that the cause of your irritation?” I said, irritated myself. “D’Artagnan finding himself a new mistress? Let me guess: she’s a little grisette or a little soubrette who has fallen for his youthful ardour and his fledgling moustache.”

Athos choked out a laugh. “A baroness, no less.”

“Ah! I am intrigued. How did he ensnare her? What trickery did he deploy? I assume he has told you.”

Finally, Athos looked at me. His eyes glittered in the darkness of the room like precious stones. “He has told me, Aramis,” he said in a voice that he appeared to drag over gravel. “But honour forbids me to tell you.”

“Did he come to you to confess or to brag?” I asked. “For if he came to brag, I believe you can safely tell me. He would tell me himself if he thought I’d listen.”

Athos smiled. “You’d listen to the tale from my mouth but not his?”

“Always.” Emboldened, I took his hand and pressed it. “How can you doubt it?” His hand was cold, as if I had rescued it out of the frozen lake in which he was submerged. I rubbed his fingers between mine to force life back into them. Had I drunk too much last night again?

“Those Englishmen we fought by the goat enclosure,” Athos said. “Yours ran away.”

“I remember.”

“One of them has a sister.”

“Who is beautiful.”

“Apparently so.” Athos sighed. “D’Artagnan loves Mme Bonacieux with his heart, as he professes, whereas he loves that Englishwoman with his head.”

I started to laugh. “Forgive me!” I gasped. “With his _head_ , does he? Oh, how very diverting the boy is. Or does ‘head’ mean something else in the Gascon patois? Does it in fact mean his-”

“Aramis!” Athos did his best to sound scandalised, but I knew him too well and loved him too dearly to not hear the note of humour reverberating in his voice. “He took it into his head to seduce her.”

“By employing what kind of trickery?” I sensed him fall silent again and pressed his hand. “You’ve said so much, you can tell me the rest. I am convinced that he would love me to hear of his conquests.”

The silence stretched, filling me with apprehension, as Athos appeared to select words and string sentences together in his head. When he spoke, it was haltingly, and I felt blood drain from his hand which lay lifeless in mine. “He… intercepted the letters she wrote to her lover.” Athos swallowed as if the words were causing him pain. “He went to the rendez-vous in that lover’s stead.”

“Intercepted a lady’s letters?” My blood, which had lain becalmed, seethed again. “And yet she let him in despite his deceit?”

“She didn’t realise he was not the one she’d expected.”

“ _How_?” My astonishment was greater than my fury.

Athos shrugged. “It was dark. Perhaps he… he may have… done something. Disguised himself.” The hand in mine twitched, as if in agony of death. He might have attempted to pull it away, but I didn’t let go.

A wave of boiling rage came crashing over me, all but pushing me down. I stayed afloat, clinging to Athos’ hand. Clinging to my conviction that a spectre was straddling my lover, stealing his breath and his soul and dragging him into darkness. I did not know what was happening. Why Athos was still adrift in murky waters. The only thing I knew was that I must not let go of him and watch him getting pulled back down into the abyss that he’d escaped.

“If he did that, Athos, he had violated her most severely,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and level as I could. The memory of the night of our reunion resurfaced: that terrifying moment when Athos confessed that it was his enforced congress with Discord, who had insinuated herself into his bed in disguise, that had pushed us both into what had almost become our watery grave. I had never quite understood what devilry had been at work then. Only once, when he was drunk and I was angry, he lifted the mantle of silence, albeit briefly, I realised that the goddess took what she wanted from him against his will and that the memory tormented him still. I never again invoked her name to shame him when he sneered or sulked at my own affaire with Marie. I never jeered that such perfidiousness was nothing out of the ordinary in his family. It might have been his father’s way, but Athos knew the difference between seduction and deception. By falling victim to his sister's deception, he had been left befouled, his pride and honour as violated as his body, and his tender heart wept tears of blood still.

“Perhaps she welcomed his advances,” Athos was saying now, with a quick sidelong glance at me, as if he was afraid of my reaction. 

“Is that what he said?” Disgust made my voice sound clipped and metallic. “That is low… even for him.”

“He did not. He told me she never knew.”

“And you didn’t run him through with your sword? I admire your restraint.”

“He didn’t know he had done wrong.”

“Did you tell him?” I curled my fingers around Athos’ hand and pressed it to my chest. “Because, Athos,” I whispered, praying that I was not about to say something that would make him drown himself in that dark lake again. “Pretending he was someone else _was_ wrong. You know that, don’t you?”

Silence again, and then his voice, a faint breath on a wisp of air. “I know.”

“He violated her without her knowledge.” Athos was still there with me, and I stretched out by his side at last and wrapped my arm around his chest. “We must make sure that it never happens again.” I spoke against his neck and his pulse heaved beneath my lips.

“I will take care that it doesn’t,” he said.

“So will I.” I tightened my arm around him and kissed his cold skin. “I promise you, Athos, I won’t leave you alone in this.”

“I know that, kitten.” He had begun to shiver and I pulled the duvet over him. I could feel ache bubble to the surface from within his stiff muscles and sleet off him.

“Would you like me to fetch you something?” Anything but his pet; my offer to play his errand boy did not extend to that little brute who extorted favours by deception, if not by force. “Wine perhaps?”

“No, thank you.” Athos was beginning to relax against me as his shivers subsided. His hand alighted on my forearm and I felt the cold of his fingers even through the fabric of my shirt. “Stay with me,” he whispered soundlessly. “Will you?”

“Always.”

***

The pink rays of aurora were barely touching the sky and I shut my eyes so as not to see them. I shut my eyes and pressed my lips to his neck, to his jaw, his chin, and finally to his lips. Aramis sighed against me, his breath dissolving into a soft moan as I thrust deeper into him. His thighs were wrapped tightly around my hips, his fingers digging ravenous half-moons into the flesh of my ass. Morning could wait. The world could wait.

I moved, the friction of our bodies producing sizzling heat between us, up, higher, all the way into him, ripping another moan from his throat and swallowing it with my own craving mouth. I spent myself into him with a shudder, my hand clasped around his cock, waiting for him to follow me in ecstasy.

When suddenly, a screech sounded from the antechamber, cutting through my mind like the blade of an Ottoman scimitar.

“Hey, HEY THERE!!! What do you want, _you slut_!”

I withdrew my cock, still dripping with my seed and the oils and Aramis hissed at me in indignation, like a feral cat.

“What are you after, _you strumpet_!” I heard Grimaud’s increasingly loud hollers.

“What on earth?” Aramis whispered and I shook my head at him frantically. What slut? What strumpet? We both tossed our bodies off the bed, not sure of where to run and what to do. That’s when Grimaud’s shouts became more desperate.

“Help! Help! Save me!” 

Aramis grabbed my sword (for his own was in the antechamber), but I intercepted him with one hand whilst the other grasped for my dressing gown in the dim glow of the arriving dawn.

“ ** _Monsieur d’Artagnan!_** ” I suddenly heard, hollered at the top of Grimaud’s lungs.

“Ah, Hera’s cunt!” Aramis exploded. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

“Hide,” I grabbed him and shoved him towards my bed, drawing the hangings.

“Hide? Are you out of your mind?”

“Aramis, get behind there!”

“Fuck you! Finish what you started!” He did not require more eloquence than that, his engorged cock speaking volumes enough for both of us. I cast a dolorous look at it, attempting not to salivate, and ruefully pushed him down onto the bed, drawing the curtains closed.

I stumbled out through my bedroom door, my dressing gown just barely belted around me, breathing deeply to give myself a semblance of calm, and immediately chastised Grimaud for allowing himself to speak. Clearly, he had forgotten our arrangement - the lip is only given in private and not in front of friends. Or d’Artagnan.

It was then that I realized our human pet was wearing a dress and I could not repress a nervous laughter from escaping me, which quickly escalated into hysterical laughter. Oh, I so wished Aramis could have seen him, almost enough to call him out of hiding!

“Don’t laugh, my friend, in heaven’s name, don’t laugh,” d’Artagnan cried out in apparent distress, “for, upon my soul, I’ll tell you, there’s nothing to laugh at.”

I had already said that I cared for d’Artagnan at least as much as for my parrot, which is why I had no desire to see him in such a state of tribulation. I immediately checked my countenance and took him by the hand, inquiring if he had been wounded. I did not want him to lose his head, like poor Raoul had lost his.

“No, but a terrible thing has just happened to me,” he stated somberly. And then he asked, “Are you alone, Athos?”

Hera’s tits! “Pardieu!” I had exclaimed, trying to give myself the time to compose an appropriate reply. “Who do you suppose could be with me at this hour?” I lifted my eyebrow to see whether he had an answer for me.

“Good, good.” He didn’t. Of course. The boy thought I was an impotent virgin: how could I have forgotten? With these words, he shot into my bedroom, uninvited. I waited for a moment before I followed him in, having not heard any screams coming from within.

I joined him in my bedroom, positioning myself in such a way that he would have to face me with his back towards the bed hangings, which, to my knowledge and hope, still hid a naked Aramis in there somewhere. I looked about the room, noticing Aramis’ clothes at the foot of the bed. Where ever he was, he was definitely still naked.

“Well, speak!” I said, probably louder than was necessary. 

The Gascon began to talk, whilst I listened and paced with nervous energy, or so I wanted him to think as I kicked Aramis’ clothes under the bed. I looked back up at him, to behold an unprecedented state of dishabille. The boy stood before me in his undershirt which barely covered his cock, but not his balls. 

“First, take this dressing gown!” My arm shot out automatically, throwing my second dressing gown to him. And by my second dressing gown, I mean Aramis’ dressing gown. Hades’ balls!

D’Artagnan, in a state of increased agitation, did not appear to notice or inquire as to why I happened to have had it handy in the first place. He slipped it on, missing the sleeves several times, and then predictably drowning in it, since he was significantly shorter than my magnificent beloved.

“Well, then?” I asked, resuming my position across from the bed which forced his back towards the drawn curtains.

“Well, then,” he leaned towards me, his lips almost touching my ear and his breath scalded my skin, just as Aramis’ face peeked out from behind the curtain and made a gesture of slicing his head off with his finger. “Milady has the mark of the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder,” he whispered. 

“Ah!” I cried out, not sure what surprised me more.

“Listen, are you sure the _other one_ is really dead?” d’Artagnan breathed into my face.

“The _other one_?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I just wanted him to leave so that I could make my lover spurt his seed all over both our bodies, like he was about to when we were so rudely interrupted. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Aramis’ face had disappeared again in a tiny huff. Even though I could not see him behind the bed curtain, the curtain itself seemed somehow more _catty_ for having hidden him.

“Yes, the one you told me about that day in Amiens.”

I sighed and let my head sink into my hands. Why was he bringing _that_ nightmare up again? As if being here to _interruptus_ our _coitus_ wasn’t offensive enough.

“This one is a woman of twenty-six or twenty-eight,” the kid insisted on continuing. I did the calculation in my head. When I had met the count presumably his demon bride would have still been in her late teens, fast forward to ten years later and… Hades’. Balls.

“Blond, isn’t she?” I asked. 

I had her portrait, actually. I thought, at the time, Grimaud was just being a pest. When I had sent him on an errand to La Fère to make sure I still had a county to be a count over and before I had decided to take off Olivier’s signet ring and join the musketeers, he had come back full of devilish glee with a miniature of Anne de Breuil. It was a very finely done, clearly expensive rendering. I had told him to wipe his ass with it, but instead the little torturer had locked it up in my casket, the same one that held the count’s ring and a collection of my odes written for Aramis - you know, of all things that rhymed with “little chyortik” and “flittermouse”.

“Yes,” d’Artagnan replied and clearly waited for me to speak again.

“Light blue eyes, of a strange brightness,” I remembered the count being quite fixated on her eyes when I had spoken to him, “with dark eyebrows and lashes?” To be honest, if the portrait did not flatter her, the countess had been quite the beauty in her day.

“Yes.”

“Tall, well built?” He kept nodding. I thought perhaps I should extemporize to throw him off track and make him forget the whole thing. “She’s missing a tooth next to the left eye tooth,” I pulled straight out of my arse.

“Yes!”

Unbelievable. Even when I was _attempting_ to lie, I had somehow hit upon truth? I hated myself.

I went on ‘describing’ this wife of mine, apparently with keen precision, because d’Artagnan became ever more excited, and when I had mentioned wanting to see her, for at that moment I really needed to behold this demon-witch with my own eyes, the boy became a complete disaster of unbridled emotion.

“Have you ever seen her furious?” he asked, his hair standing on ends.

“No,” I replied, for I had never seen her at all.

“A tigress!” he raved, “A panther!” He might have named a few more felines, but I was becoming distracted by Aramis again, who was making unmistakable signs for me to get rid of the Gascon and as soon as possible. 

I had tuned back into our conversation with d’Artagnan at the point of him expressing concern that this woman might do me some bodily harm.

“Ah, my dear,” I said carelessly, “What do I care if she kills me!” As long as she doesn’t touch my cock. At this point Aramis made a face at me that spoke of my own stupidity and I hastened to add, “Do you think by any chance that I set much store on life?” Aramis shook his head at me and disappeared behind the hangings again.

Having given the boy a quick precautionary lecture, I had decided since I could not seem to be rid of him, I could at least attempt to depart taking him with me. A ruse which would have worked perfectly, had d’Artagnan not reminded me he wasn’t precisely outfitted to leave my abode. 

Grimaud was summoned. I gestured to him that we needed d’Artagnan’s clothes, the male ones, the ones he normally wears, from his house, and also to burn the dress in which he arrived. Grimaud replied to me in gestures that he understood perfectly, and that he also took it upon himself to hide M. Aramis’ sword and hat which had been left in the antechamber, oh, and also that I was a huge pain in his arse and that he hated his servitude to me.

We were left ostensibly alone, for d’Artagnan still had no idea that my naked lover was hidden and furious two steps behind him, to have an awkward discussion about that damned sapphire, which the Gascon now got into his head to bestow upon me. 

“Didn’t you tell me it was a family ring?” Why did the Gascon have such a damned good memory?

“Yes,” I replied sourly, “My father bought it for two thousand écus, as he told me once. It was one of the wedding gifts he gave to my mother, and it is magnificent.” My _Gods_ , but I was a horrible liar! For just as I spoke, I had remembered telling him only a few days ago that the ring had passed to my mother from her own mother. I looked up at d’Artagnan, certain that he would catch me in that lie, but his face remained impassive, so I went on. “My mother gave it to me, and I, fool that I was, rather than keeping the ring as a sacred relic, gave it away in turn to that… wretched woman.” Oh, I hoped Aramis was having a good giggle back there, into the curtain, at my expense.

The truth was, I would have rather gotten eaten by another sea monster than touch that thing again, with everything it had symbolized. At last, I contrived to convince d’Artagnan that we should pawn it and split the money halfway between the two of us.

Finally, Grimaud had arrived with Planchet, who had come bearing his master’s accoutrements and we could both get dressed whilst I shot regretful looks towards my bed curtains and kicked Aramis’ boots deeper underneath lest d’Artagnan finally come to his senses and take in the sights and the smells. Alas, I need not have worried. We left without any further ado, as I gallantly allowed d’Artagnan to walk off in front of me before I could whisper “I’ll make this up to you” and close the bedroom door.

***

My fury was such that my breath arrested in my lungs. For a moment, I was paralysed, fighting down the frenzied urge to fling myself from the bed and after Athos. My fangs tingled at the thought of ripping d’Artagnan’s throat.

But I restrained myself. I breathed. I pulled the curtains back, left the bed, walked to Athos’ wardrobe and took out his finest shirt. I climbed back into bed, kneeled upright and pushed my half-hard cock into the fabric. The shirt smelled of Athos, the bed smelled of Athos, my senses were full of him, and I closed my eyes and pictured him paying for what he had done. He would pay for it on his knees.

I opened my eyes again and watched my cock disappear in the laced folds. The cambric was pristine white and soft, and I clenched my hand and _pushed_. My overheated body steamed with lust and rage, and my cock swelled in my grip. I had been so close, _so close_. The hot swirl of lust unfurled in my abdomen, the muscles of my thighs clenched, and I slipped my free hand into the slick heat between my legs. Athos’ cock had been dripping wet when he pulled it out of me. I clenched my teeth and pushed my finger in and felt my body clasp down on it. I would make him pay for leaving me like that, on my knees in his bed, panting with need, fucking myself with my own fingers as I fucked his shirt. I spent myself with a strangled groan, soaking his shirt with my seed. Once my heartbeat evened out, I used the shirt to wipe myself down. It would dry by the time he got back home, but there was no mistaking the stains.

I hung the shirt on the bedpost, arranged the sleeves daintily, and then I got dressed. Grimaud was in the antechamber, yawning as he indulged in a domestic chore of some sorts. He inclined his head in greeting and stood to open the door for me. I smiled affably and saw a flicker of something in Grimaud’s eyes. Suddenly, it struck me that it’d been a long time since I heard him talk. Athos had mentioned that he had taken to thrashing his Grigori if he communicated in any other way than by signing, because the ‘Olympian lip’, as he called it, had been getting embarrassing. Considering the stream of ‘strumpets’ and ‘sluts’ that had been pouring forth from Grimaud’s mouth this morning, I could see how Athos didn’t deem him fit to be a gentleman’s valet.

“Good morning, Grimaud,” I greeted him amiably. Grimaud was the only creature alive apart from Athos who knew that my disposition was not particularly amiable (even Porthos could be occasionally fooled), but we liked to keep up pretences. It wouldn’t do to encourage familiarity in servants.

Then again… I stopped in my steps and regarded Grimaud pensively. I had known him for as long as I had known Athos, and never before had I heard him shout abuse at anyone before. (Granted, for the first fifty years of our acquaintance, the Grigori lived in a vessel that had had its tongue ripped out.)

“Tell me, Grimaud,” I said, watching him closely. “What do you honestly think of M. d’Artagnan?”

Another flicker, a spark of celestial fire, and I could have sworn I saw the corners of his mouth twitch in a grimace. But Athos had trained him well and the Zeusian guardian didn’t say a word. Instead, he treated me to an eloquent gesture. (I might have over-interpreted it, because I can’t imagine that Grimaud knew about _that_ sort of thing being physically possible.)

“That is well.” I nodded at him and strode to the door, where I turned on my heel. “One more thing, Grimaud: that shirt of M. Athos that hangs on the bedpost – leave it there until his return.”

Then, I went home. In my boudoir, my gaze fell on the little ebony box inlaid with mother of pearl, which was holding the epistle from Marie and the Spanish pistoles she had sent me so that I could equip myself for the campaign to La Rochelle. I sighed and shook my head in desolation. I would have gladly asked Marie to fund Athos as well, and I knew that she would have happily complied. But accepting money from the woman to whom he sneeringly referred to as “that Ondine” or “your Rohan nymph” was out of the question for my prideful godling. He preferred to sell the ring d’Artagnan had obtained through base trickery and share the spoils to purchase his outfit. It was most aggravating.

Fury began to rise up within my breast again, but I pushed down on it. It would not do to get angry at Athos. I had made him a promise only the other night; I had accepted that he had taken it upon himself to bring up the boy. I would not back out now. It was my penance for all my sins and transgressions.

By the time Planchet arrived at my doorstep an hour later, I had regained my calm. I’d washed and changed into fresh clothes and was waiting for Bazin to prepare my breakfast. It was ‘urgent’, Planchet informed me excitedly. A matter of the utmost importance had come up, my assistance was indispensable, the Apocalypse and _all_ its riders were upon us, the seven angels were about to sound the seven trumpets, I must hurry or else.

I advised Bazin to have my breakfast ready on my return and followed those most urgent of summons of my august emperor. D’Artagnan had left in Athos’ company: either something had happened to Athos, or Athos had consented to d’Artagnan calling for my help. In the first case, I had to be there. In the second case, I had to be there and treat Athos to my silent disdain.

I found them both safe and sound (though possibly not sane) at d’Artagnan’s lodgings. They had a woman there who had the look of a soubrette or a grisette about her, and I treated Athos to a look of disdain. He, who knew the truth about Porthos’ ‘duchess’, had apparently believed the tale of d’Artagnan’s ‘baroness’.

The matter was all explained to me: the soubrette, who had been the English baroness’ lady’s maid, had fallen for the youthful ardour and fledgling moustache of our dashing Gascon hero. The looks full of devoted love with which she clung to him told me everything that I wanted to know, and more. He had contrived, by assuring her of his love most passionate, most eternal, to intercept the billets the Englishwoman had sent to her lover. That explained that part of the mystery – how the letter asking for a rendez-vous had ended up in d’Artagnan’s hands: the love-struck soubrette had handed it over in exchange for the Gascon’s declarations.

Now that the intrigue had been blasted open, she had run off and thrown herself into the arms and at the mercy of her devoted cavalier, who kept calling her ‘my dear little love’ and swore love eternal. I was sorely tempted to inquire after his love for Mme Bonacieux, which was the reason why we had all ended up entangled in that mess in the first place. But I was spared the trouble when it turned out that not d’Artagnan but _Athos_ was the one who was in love with the elusive seamstress, because, as was frequently reiterated, d’Artagnan was very much in love with the soubrette. There was certainly a lot of love being mongered among the parties present, eternal or otherwise.

I treated Athos to a look of disdain that went over d’Artagnan’s head, literally and figuratively. It must have been all those Shakespeare plays Athos had seen in London; they had given him a taste for the Atellan farce. I had barely time to wonder if d’Artagnan was the Macchus or the Manducus of the piece (for Porthos was our Bucco and Athos our Pappus, whereas I was forced to conclude that mine was the role of the harlequinesque Samnio), before I found myself entreated, implored, beseeched and commanded to solve the problem of the inconvenient surplus woman by sending her as far away from Paris as possible.

I was willing enough to do that. From where I stood, any woman would greatly benefit from being sent away as far as possible from d’Artagnan. I reflected for a minute how to best phrase my reply without openly insulting anyone in the process. My blood – _Athos’_ blood – rose to my cheeks and I said in my mildest and most polite tone: “Will it be really rendering you a service, d'Artagnan?”

“I shall be grateful to you all my life!” he exclaimed.

Ah, his gratitude would be eternal, just like the love he professed for the soubrette. I was moved beyond words and my heart melted in my breast. “Very well,” I said. “Madame de Bois-Tracy asked me – for one of her friends who resides in the provinces, I believe – for a trustworthy maid. If you can, my dear d’Artagnan, answer for Mademoiselle-”

“Oh, monsieur, be assured that I shall be entirely devoted to the person who will give me the means of quitting Paris,” the soubrette said. Her words reassured me. For she struck me the most loyal young woman, who would serve her mistress most faithfully and not let herself be swayed by pretty, ardent or accidental promises.

I treated Athos to a look of disdain as I placed myself at the table and wrote a little note.

_Madame,_

_The person who delivers this billet to your hands has recently lost the trust of an influential patroness and is accordingly in need of a new position. She is well-versed in the art of spinning and weaving and would therefore, I believe, be well-placed in the employ of a weaver’s, tailor’s or silk merchant’s business in Tours. Our mutual friend, Marie Michon, may perhaps know of a suitable position. I would be most grateful, Madame, if you could outfit the young woman with all that is necessary for a long journey and offer her asylum in your household for one night. You will understand that for reasons of delicacy and decorum it is impossible for me to undertake any of this myself. I wish I could assure you that I am sending one person only, not two. But of that I cannot be certain, for it is not I who had been acquainted with the young woman those past few weeks._

_I trust you will manage the affair with your customary discretion. My gratitude is, as ever, yours._

_A._

I sealed the billet with my ring, wrote the name of Mme de Bois-Tracy on the envelope and handed it to Kitty.

“And now, my dear girl,” said d'Artagnan, ever the considerate and gentle lover. “You know that it is not good for any of us to be here. Therefore let us separate. We shall meet again in better days.”

“And whenever we find each other, in whatever place it may be,” said Kitty, “you will find me loving you as I love you today.”

“Dicers’ oaths!” said Athos, while d’Artagnan went to conduct Kitty downstairs.

I spared us both the look of disdain and treated him to one of blank resignation instead.

We parted company, for Athos and d’Artagnan went off to flog the ring d’Artagnan had received as a memento of his night of deceit, while I returned home to finally break my fast. It seemed, however, that the Gascon and his concerns were destined to occupy me all day. When, as previously agreed, we were all assembled in Athos’ apartment at four o’clock, two letters for d’Artagnan were brought in: two new summons, each one more urgent than the other, which we were required to follow. That was why we found ourselves at the road of Chaillot later that evening, attempting to catch a glimpse of the woman whom d’Artagnan loved with all his heart as she passed by in her carriage. (The woman d’Artagnan loved with all his heart in the evening was not the same woman he had loved till the end of his life in the morning, for the latter would soon be conveniently despatched to Tours where love could not easily follow, and two tender hearts would forever be parted.)

That feat of chivalry accomplished, we stood guard around the Palais-Cardinal, where d’Artagnan had been invited to an interview with his Eminence. Our task was to prevent the evil churchman from abducting our Gascon general-in-chief and throwing him in the same dungeon where he kept all those maidens his minions routinely carried off. D’Artagnan returned from his audience unscathed and only mildly shaken. Pale and trembling, he informed us that the malevolent M. de Richelieu had proposed to him to enter into his guards with the rank of ensign, like the heartless villain that he was. An offer such as this was, of course, shocking, and Porthos and I commended d’Artagnan with one voice for refusing such a perfidious proposal.

“Well, that was all very exciting,” I said to Athos when we found ourselves alone at last. “Thank you for that.”

Athos smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I found the shirt,” he said. “Thank you for that.”

We were walking from the cabaret where we had left Porthos at cards in the hope that he had enough sense not to gamble away his brand-new outfit.

“I made a vow earlier,” I continued in my mildest tone, “that you would pay for what you did this morning. Or rather: for what you didn’t.”

Athos looked at me from the side. “You are surprisingly docile,” he said. “I don’t trust it. I expected you to tear my head off the moment you’re alone with me.”

“And yet you didn’t attempt to avoid a tête-à-tête,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

He shrugged. “Better get it over and done with.”

We continued in silence until we turned the corner, and then I spoke again. “No. I’m not angry. To tell you the truth – which I know you like a lot, Athos – I am intrigued.” I laughed softly. “Your human pet not only has the devil’s own luck, he also appears to have as many lives as I do. I wish to see what happens next. You Hellenic deities are not the only ones who find the fates of humans a diverting form of entertainment.”

“Are you certain he is human?” Athos asked.

“Yes.” There was no doubt about it. The Gascon smelled human.

“Besides,” Athos added with a sly grin. “We are leaving with the King the day after tomorrow and will be travelling at his Majesty’s pace. While d’Artagnan goes with the Guards under Monsieur's command and at Monsieur's pace. I imagine that this prospect is not entirely displeasing to chyortik...”

“Athos.” I stopped and faced him, for we had come to a junction. “Where are we going?”

“Home,” he whispered, his eyes dark and hopeful.

“Yes.” I touched his chest lightly with my fingertips. “But my home; not yours.”

He raised an eyebrow. I leaned in and whispered in his ear: “I don’t care for being interrupted again. If this trend continues, one of us will develop impotence soon, and I am positive that it won’t be me.”

Athos shoved me backwards into the door the moment it had slammed shut behind us. We had pushed our way past Bazin, down the hall and into my bedroom, where he threw himself upon me to ravish me like a feral beast. “Aramis,” he growled against my lips. “What would you do if I weren’t here?”

“What?” He had thrown me off balance with his question more so than with his body.

“Show me,” he dug his teeth into my lower lip and tugged. “Show me what you did in my bed this morning.”

I gasped out a laugh into the heat of his kiss. “You know what I did. You’ve seen it before. Hundreds of times.”

“I want to see it again,” he began to remove my clothes with practised ease. “Did you lie down?” My sword belt and baldric clanged as they hit the floor. “Kneel up?” The buttons of my doublet yielded under his clever fingers. “Tell me, Aramis. I want to know.” His mouth hot on my neck, his breath settling like steam on my skin.

“Kneel up,” I gasped as he rent my shirt over my chest. “Jesus, Athos!” For his teeth were drilling into the ligaments of my neck.

“Jesus?” he hissed through clenched jaws. “Is he the one you’re thinking about?” He grabbed me by the waistband and swirled me around, shoving me into the prie-dieu in the corner. “Kneel for him, then.”

“Athos-” His eyes on me, boring through me, all the way down into my souls, and his hands, his hands on my skin, heating and cooling at the same time as I quivered under his touch.

“Kneel for me,” his voice soaked straight into my skin. “Kneel for me like you kneel for him.”

I dropped to my knees. I was powerless. Athos’ voice like poisoned mead, dripping into my ears. Dripping into my brain. Dripping into my heart. His hand between my shoulderblades and his breath hot on my neck as he bit into the muscle of my shoulder. He was undoing my breeches, shoving them down my hips even as he shoved me into the shelf of the prie-dieu and shoved one knee between mine.

“Touch yourself.” Athos’ hand on my abdomen, his fingers in the hairs on my groin. Fingertips brushing against my cock, barely touching, and it twitched desperately in search of friction.

I licked across my palm and wrapped my hand around my cock, like I had done that morning. “That is well,” Athos murmured into my ear. “You’re such a good boy, little chyortik.” He pressed his hips into mine from behind and rubbed his hard prick into me through his clothes. “My beautiful boy.”

“Athos!” His name the only thing on my lips, a perpetual prayer, as his hands scraped up and down my flanks. My head rolled back onto his shoulder and he mouthed at my throat.

“Yes, my love?” he purred. “What do you want? Show me. Show me what you did.”

“Take your shirt off then,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “ _Then_ I’ll show you.”

He laughed softly into my ear. “So feisty, Aramis. Will you be so feisty with my cock up your ass, I wonder?” A firm hand on the nape of my neck forced my head down and his teeth nipped at the top of my spine. Suddenly, the warmth of his body was gone, and when he returned, his skin was gloriously, deliciously naked. He ground his chest into my back, rough hairs and sweaty skin, and I arched into the furnace of his embrace. His hand probing me from behind, and I raised my eyes to the crucifix on the wall just as one slick finger was slipping into me. Those beautiful lips mouthing at my neck; those beautiful fingers fucking me like I’d fucked myself that morning, only deeper; in long, steady strokes that kindled the fire in my loins. I stood aflame by the time he pushed into me, one hand tangled in my hair, the other spreading me open for his cock.

“Say your prayers, Aramis,” he blew into my ear. His hips pulled away and slammed back into me, ramming me into the prie-dieu. I cried out and his hand shot to my mouth, gagging me. “Shh…” He kissed the side of my neck. “Don’t let your lackey hear. Don’t let _Jesus_ hear how much you enjoy a cock up your ass. He was against buggery, Jesus, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” I panted, struggling free from his gagging hand. “You knew him. You tell me.”

Athos laughed, teeth scraping against my shoulder. That clever hand of his trailed down my throat, skipped over my collarbone and then he pinched my nipple. I hissed and pushed my arse into him with such ferocious force that he had to cling to me to prevent getting unseated. He scrambled for purchase and I used that brief moment in which he was off kilter to find a better angle and to fuck myself on his prick. Heat shot through me when he pinched my nipple again, my body slipping away from me already. Athos tried to motion my head down into the position of a penitent, but I tilted it back to rest on his shoulder and turned my head to moan his name into his ear.

“Yes, say it again, my love,” he gasped, hips falling into that firm, steady rhythm that we both loved. “You are my love, aren’t you? My sweet, beautiful boy.”

“Always,” I panted into his hair, while his mouth was leaving scorch marks along the line of my shoulder and neck. “Always. Athos.”

“This feels so good. My cock in your ass. Aramis.” Another powerful thrust of his hips and the prie-dieu beneath us shook and slammed into the wall. “So _good_.”

I was burning up. The friction of his cock as it slid in and out of me; my nipples bursting with pleasure-pain under his fingers; my own cock, hard like the hilt of my sword in my hand, ready to spill. I wanted him to spend himself first. I arched my back and rode his cock with vicious abandon, until my name erupted on his lips like a profanity and he collapsed against my back, arms wrapped around me as if I were his salvation. I lifted his hand to my mouth and licked the pulse point at his wrist with my tongue and teeth to make his spent prick twitch inside me once more.

“Aramis.” My name torn from the depth of his throat. “Aramis. Come for me.”

My body convulsed in his grip and my seed splattered over the smooth wooden surface of the prie-dieu. We sunk into each other, drowning in the damp heat of each other’s bodies, waiting for our heartbeat to even out. When he pulled out, it was very gently, with one hand cupped between my spread legs to catch his seed as it dribbled out of me. “Take me to bed, Aramis,” he whispered. And, breathless and unsteady as I was on my legs, I did. We crawled into the sheets, the linen cool against our heated skin, and he wrapped himself around me. “I can’t stay,” he murmured.

I threaded my fingers through his. “Stay.” The beat of his heart as it thudded against my back. “This is the last night-” Athos brushed his lips over my much-bitten shoulder and I smiled. “The last night of privacy. The campaign is about to start.”

“Busy day tomorrow.” He was still talking, but I heard by the sound of his voice that he was drifting off into Morpheus’ embrace already. In my heart, I uttered a brief prayer to the pagan god, to bless Athos’ sleep.

“Very,” I agreed. “You need to rest. Sleep now, Athos.” He didn’t hear me. His breath, his heart told me that he was adrift in the realm of dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, all of d'Artagnan's dialogues are taken straight from the book. As are his adventures in seduction, coercion and deception. As is the episode with d'Artagnan in drag.


	6. The Siege of La Rochelle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the _depths_ to which we sink to fix Dumas' plotholes! It's _embarrassing_. (For him, not for us.)

**Villeroy - Summer, 1627**

The King, may the Gods… er… One God keep him, had sickened in Burgundy, bless his dainty disposition. Burgundy was fraught with excellent wine and buxom wenches. If there was one place where we had to get mired, Villeroy was certainly not a terrible choice.

We had been stationed in a sort of standstill for months. Every morning, they prayed for news of the King’s convalescence, and each evening the news arrived that His Royal Majesty was still abed. Which would have been a good reason to stay abed myself, had I not been technically sharing a bed with Athos and Aramis. A tent, I meant to say _tent_ , but those two lovebirds may as well had turned the entire thing into one sweaty, bloody, shared cot.

Oh sure, they thought they were being very clandestine with their little hand brushes and lovelorn side glances. Mind you, I was happy that they were apparently so very reconciled as to no longer require my services as their confessor and spiritual guide! But there are only so many times you can be awakened in the middle of the night by your comrades, giggling from under the covers because of whatever unmentionable thing they were doing under there. Probably holding hands and whispering sweet nothings, like a couple of Theban youths who have found a secluded corner in the gymnasium.

Aramis, who did not require sleep, would usually begin the night propped up in the corner by the side of a dripping candle, reading one of his Jesuit manuscripts about demonology, and would somehow inevitably be discovered by morning curled into a ball, with his head pillowed on Athos’ chest or shoulder. The ball itself was full of vigilance and hissed at me if I tried to move him. 

One night, I had drunk too much, and nature had forced me up and out of my tent. When I had returned, I had found Athos asleep, with his head in Aramis’ lap while the other read his chyortik liturgy, his fingers absentmindedly combing through Athos’ hair. Our eyes met. He had put his reading down, as if about to say something.

“Gross,” I whispered, instead.

“I thought you _liked_ it when we were in love,” Aramis grinned, his devilish smile in stark contrast to the sweet picture he presented with his demigod lover asleep in his lap while he petted his curly mane. 

“I do,” I grumbled. “But get a tent.”

“We have a tent.”

“Get your own tent.”

At this moment, Aramis’ eyes traveled to his lap, mine followed, and I sighed, predicting exactly what he would say next. “I already have my own tent.”

“Gross,” I repeated and returned to my bed.

At that moment, Athos stirred, rolled, and pressed his slumbering face right into the tumescent bulge of Aramis’ crotch. It’s a good thing Aramis never made a noise when he laughed, but his body heaved in amusement and he bent over to place a chaste kiss upon his lover’s dormant forehead.

God damn it, they were adorable. I wanted to vomit. 

D’Artagnan’s absence appeared to make everyone more affable. Athos made it a point to mention that he was worried, for the record. I usually made some noise about how he always claimed that d’Artagnan was smarter than all of us combined (a slight hyperbole perhaps, but a necessary one) and therefore we should not be so concerned for his well-being. Aramis only smiled like the Sphynx.

“You’re hoping he’ll get killed, aren’t you?” I prodded when Athos was out of earshot.

“Who _me_? Wish such a thing upon my beloved’s dearest pet? I would never!”

“He won’t get killed,” I laughed. “He’s probably also immortal.”

“He smells human,” Aramis replied, licking his teeth as if in anticipation of d’Artagnan’s blood staining them. 

I was quite amazed he had restrained himself thus far. In fact, Aramis had been the epitome of self-restraint with d’Artagnan leading up to the marching of his regiment, going as far as to have the young Mlle. Kitty over at his place the evening before the campaign, conniving to dispatch her to his nymph at Tours instead of doing more pleasant things (like I was, with my Procureuse). He must have loved Athos even more than I thought to be put out this way over the Gascon business. Nevertheless, M. des Essart’s guards had been sent as the vanguard to La Rochelle, and where there were Huguenots, there were numerous ways to die. Or so I was led to understand.

I had taken to dicing and cards most nights, to give the two turtle doves some semblance of privacy, not wishing to witness anymore tenting, as it were. Fortuna was on my side, for as we were stranded in Villeroy, I may have lost my entire outfit, if only it wasn’t for my steady winning streak. I took it for the gods… _Jesus_ and Mary and Joseph… rewarding me for my saintly sacrifice. Besides, unlike our pet the Gascon, I actually had other friends among members of my company. Well, to be clear, they weren’t the kind of friends you let see your hidden ball of sunshine and the replica of the Grilled Octopus, but they were men whose company I enjoyed quite a bit, and did not at all mind winning from or losing to.

But as much as I wanted to give them time to do whatever it was that they needed to do, I still required sleep. I was only half-Titan, just as Athos was only half-Olympian. He may have been curse-powered as I was solar-powered, but even our strength had limits. I crept back into the tent, as I normally would, in the darkest hours of the night, and was just about to let Morpheus take me, when Athos woke up screaming.

It had been some time since either of us had observed this phenomenon, for even Aramis, who had ever been the picture of composure (when he wasn’t the picture of Wrath), startled and let his book fall to the ground. In a flash, he was shaking Athos awake, pulling him out of the clutches of whatever nightmare fiend had taken hold of him. Athos’ body sprang erect in his bed, his eyes still blind to the physical world.

“Get away from me!” he rasped out.

I watched as Aramis cradled his lover’s head in his hands and pressed their lips together in an attempt to pacify him.

“It’s all right. It’s me,” Aramis whispered.

“Aramis… you weren’t there!” Athos gasped, clearly with one foot still firmly planted in his nightmare.

“I’m here now,” Aramis promised, arms wrapping around Athos to hold him fast to his breast.

I was suddenly not sleepy anymore. It wasn’t often that I had the opportunity to lift the veil on what had happened to Athos back on Rhodes, and now that I had, I was hastening to draw it back. I had seen what the Gods do to those who defy them; I’d seen well enough what they’d done to Prometheus, and that was only his liver! For Athos to survive what he had survived and to come out of that ordeal with any of his sanity intact at all, well, it was a miraculous feat. In truth, it intimidated me a bit.

But this nightmare had appeared to be an isolated occurrence, not to be repeated again as long as we were stationed in Villeroy.

We were still so much closer to Paris than to La Rochelle, it seemed a shame that we had ever left at all, for I missed my bed, and I missed my ball of sunshine. I even missed my darling Procureuse. She was not yet a widow, but I had very high hopes for the dear lady, or rather her husband, or more specifically, her husband's treasure chest. At the very least, I could always make her a widow myself, nothing would be easier! Oh, I missed Paris. 

Although with Athos and Aramis back in high spirits, at least the summer had gone by merrily. Athos now drank fairly moderately and Aramis never mentioned joining the Church. The upcoming war gave us focus and a sense of joint purpose the kind which we hadn’t truly experienced since writing that infamous letter to the Sultan of Egypt. There was a kind of peace in war. I could see why Athos found it so soothing. You go where you’re told, you follow orders, you kill the enemy: it’s relaxing, really.

These were the halcyon days. No nymphs, no Gascons, no Huguenots in sight. It would not be until early November that his Majesty, with our regiment in tow, would reach La Rochelle. Just in the nick of time to stop d’Artagnan from getting poisoned by that English lady he had so egregiously violated (or so I was later told). I could practically see the disappointment boil under Aramis’ skin. Athos was frowning again and I found myself unable to keep track of the Gascon's mistresses and their various whereabouts. And so, we were somehow drawn back into d'Artagnan's web of intrigue and the halcyon days were over.

***

**La Rochelle, December 1627**

Oh blessed war! Oh blessed slaughter! I praised God – my God or Ares, it was all the same, for He was the God of War, under whichever name he decided to guide our swords. The campaign that had led us to La Rochelle was a war against heretics, against Huguenots and against the English. It was slaughter sanctioned, nay, commanded by the Church, and I rejoiced in it. It reminded me of those years long-gone when I taught my sabre the art of killing heathens on the battlefields of my Wallachian homeland. It reminded me of the cross of the Knights of Rhodes and of the sword of the Knights of Malta. All my life had been spent killing unbelievers and drinking their blood. I lurked in the shadows of the trenches and I smiled at the man whom I pierced with my blade, savouring his final breath, his final fear, the final beat of his heart. I walked the battlefields daimon victorious.

When our company wasn’t engaged in battle, I spent most of my days with my nose buried in my breviary or saying my prayers in my Book of Hours. Reading the familiar words over and over again calmed my blood, which was perpetually a-boil with lust in those days. Lust for blood and lust for my godling, from whose veins I abstained like a Catholic abstains from flesh during Lent, for I did not wish to weaken him in the middle of a campaign. (To Athos’ exasperation and Porthos’ amusement, I also abstained from meat on Fridays. I thought it wise, for I was filled to the brim with blood of Huguenots and the Rochellais - blood that rose to my cheeks and pooled to my cock at the slightest provocation. One day per week of fasting and cleansing myself appeared a sensible option under the circumstances.)

We had arrived in La Rochelle in November and had been promptly dragged into d’Artagnan’s web of mayhem and murder: Milady had sent him a dozen of bottles of Anjou wine, the wine turned out to be poisoned, a man died in dreadful agony, and when I pointed out to Athos that all that was d’Artagnan’s fault, he reprimanded me. Poisoning was base and vile crime, as he said. So was rape, I snapped at him. “And poison is the only weapon of which a woman may avail herself. She could have hardly treated him to a sword thrust, could she?”

“Is that what your nymph claims?” Athos said, curling his lip, and the subject died a natural death.

Two or three weeks had passed since the episode with the poisoned Anjou wine, and Athos, Porthos and I found ourselves in the Red Dovecot one December night when d’Artagnan was in the trenches with his company and unable to accompany us. Athos had discovered the inn two days previously and had decided it was necessary to sample its stock. And so the three of us were gathered around a table in a quiet corner, drinking wine and playing dice, when the company at the inn acquired an addition. A lady entered, wrapped in a hooded winter cloak, in company with a cavalier who conducted her upstairs. From where we were sitting, it was impossible to see the lady’s face, but something about the frisson that swept through the crowd gathered by the door told me that she was young and beautiful.

Indeed, my suspicions were proven correct when not long after the lady’s arrival a bawling and a roaring erupted amidst the clutter of men. The huddle of bodies dispersed and grew back together as drunkards separated from the not-quite-so-drunks, like sheep and goats would be separated on the Day of Judgment. The sheep returned meekly to their goblets and their cards, while the goats – prime specimens of billy-goats, judging by their smell and their intentions – began to climb the stairs which led to the lady’s chamber.

The door remained closed; the cavalier who had accompanied the lady did not show himself to send the brigands on their way. I exchanged a look with Athos, who, in turn, glanced at Porthos and then at the gaggle of goats. They had scaled the top of the stairs and, hollering and bleating at the top of their lungs, began to prepare themselves to force the door. Those preparations mainly consisted of taking deep draughts from their bottles and slapping each other’s backs a lot whilst emitting swinish grunts.

Athos stood. He crossed the room and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Messieurs,” he said in his quietest, most commanding voice. It was impossible that they should hear him above the racket that they were making, and yet it did not surprise me in the least that they did. My godling’s powers were not of this world.

A blow-by-blow account of what followed would be most tedious. I shall therefore relate only what we later related to the cardinal when we encountered him on the road. Athos, faithful to his maxim of never drawing his sword against the hoi polloi, with whose blood he did not wish to besmirch his noble blade, seized a charging billy-goat round the waist and threw him out of the window. The crash, the scream of pain which morphed into a wail worthy of the Furies themselves, told us that the man had suffered the most unfortunate landing. It appeared that, in falling, he had broken his thigh; a broken bone being the most inconvenient affliction, he was no longer desirous to press his suit with the lady upstairs.

Meanwhile, Porthos, who knew that duels were prohibited and who would never break the law under the eyes of so many witnesses, strode haughtily to the table next to the stairs, gave his moustache a polite twirl and asked the occupants to vacate their seat with the utmost alacrity. It was a most touching display, for Porthos, whose proclivity to take what was not his had made him an excellent pirate, had initially found the concept of asking for permission rather troubling. Athos and I had devoted ourselves to imparting good manners and the virtue of politeness on our Titanic friend, and it had paid off: the men so courteously addressed scurried off like rats, leaving the bench at Porthos’ disposal. He picked it up with ease and slammed it into one of the lechers with such force that I could hear the goat’s shoulder break under the onslaught.

As to myself – well, in those days I had dedicated myself to studies of theology (although Athos liked to call them ‘studies of demonology’) and was determined to enter the ranks of the Jesuits, for their libraries were most extensive and their power was most intoxicating. As a man of the robe in the making, I cultivated a mildness of manner that did not go well with tavern brawls. Rather than drawing my sword against a randy brigand, I therefore sought to appease my friends and suggested that, rather than settling the dispute with fists in full view of the host and the other patrons, we should permit the herd to proceed upstairs, where I could take care of them more discreetly in the shadows.

It was at this point that one of the wretches stabbed me in the left shoulder. It stung and my blood boiled, rushing to the gash like an avalanche. My patience failed me, I drew my sword, the attacker threw himself at me with vigour, but he tripped and fell so unluckily that he impaled himself on the steel in my hand. I tugged it back, for I did not wish him to linger at the end of my blade, but, no doubt weakened by blood loss, he staggered again and my sword pierced his ribs, just below his heart. I felt it beat in frantic, fearful agony, felt the thud run along length of my blade, up my arm and to my own heart, which throbbed in sympathy. I pulled my sword out of his body and, to my great chagrin, saw him stumble forward again. My much-abused blade passed through his throat, missing both jugulars. He was the clumsiest man I had ever encountered.

After that unexpected exercise, we left the Red Dovecot and made our way back to the camp. However, Fate had other plans in store for us for that night. M. de Richelieu crossed our path and, as our commanding officer, asked us to accompany him as his guard. This is how we found ourselves back at the Red Dovecot, where his Eminence had an appointment with a lady. The same lady, in fact, whom we had protected from the ardent adherents of Pan earlier that evening. While the cardinal went upstairs to confer with the lady (the cavalier who had accompanied her having been previously despatched), we were led into a chamber on the ground floor to wait for his return by a good fire. Porthos and I placed ourselves by the table to while away the time with dice, while Athos walked about the room in a contemplative mood.

Suddenly, Athos’ voice, a low commanding hiss: “Fasten the door!”

Porthos looked up in surprise, while I hastened to bolt the door. Athos beckoned us to join him where he stood by the pipe of the stove, which was broken in half and passed through the ceiling. We heard the sound of voices, reverberating all the way from the chamber above. In one of them, we recognised the cardinal. The other was a female voice, clear and refined, underpinned with the soft melody of a mild summer breeze which might easily turn into the roar of a hurricane.

“Listen, Milady,” the cardinal was saying, and I glanced at Athos.

“Milady,” Athos muttered. But that was not the time to talk, and so we listened.

So that was the woman whom d’Artagnan had bedded without her knowledge and who had attempted to kill him in revenge. The woman whose ring had been sold to furnish Athos and d’Artagnan with outfits for the current campaign. I didn’t care what Athos had claimed about the old gods, that they were asleep on Olympus – I sensed the hand of Tyche in all this, for the coincidences were much too contrived to be the work of the One God, who generally preferred a much more straightforward approach.

We listened to the cardinal, who appeared to honour Milady with his patronage and his trust to a considerable degree, sending her on a mission to England. She was entrusted with the task of stopping the Duke of Buckingham from menacing France any further. Were she to succeed, he would not set off for La Rochelle and the campaign in which we were currently engaged would thus come to an end. Were she to fail… No, that option was not even considered. Were her _negotiations_ to fail, his Grace would die. Which, as he was our enemy and currently engaged in military action against France, was not an entirely outlandish notion.

No, the thing that worried me about the overheard conversation was the list of arguments that Milady was to put before Buckingham to prompt his retreat. By his own admission, it was his love for Anne of Austria that caused him to attack France. Much like d’Artagnan, his Grace wanted to gain access to the woman he loved (with his head or his heart, who could tell) by any means in his power. Milady was to inform him that the cardinal had evidence in his possession that would compromise Anne of Austria if England persisted in her hostilities against France.

That evidence that would compromise the Queen – that evidence compromised Marie to the same extent. My blood drained from my heart the moment the cardinal pronounced Marie’s name. In the precipitation with which he had quit the Île de Ré, Buckingham had forgotten and left behind him in his lodging a certain letter from Marie which singularly compromised the queen, inasmuch as it proved not only that her Majesty could love the enemies of the king but that she could conspire with the enemies of France. I cursed the cretinous English peacock under my breath. What kind of fool left incriminating evidence behind when he fled the scene of crime?

The verve and elegance with which Marie threw herself into such cabals were as invigorating as they were arousing, but she played a dangerous game, my beautiful nymph. Still, there was still time to redress the problem. Tyche had guided my steps to the stovepipes in the Red Dovecot at the right moment for me to overhear that Marie might be in danger. I knew that Athos was listening intently to the entire conversation, so that I could safely begin to make plans how to best smuggle a billet to Marie, in which I would tell her that her letter had fallen into the cardinal’s hands and entreat her to regulate her behaviour and her correspondence for the time being.

I rose from my seat and my companions looked at me.

“Call of nature,” I mouthed at them, unbolted the door and glided outside. I glanced up the stairs, deliberating. I could sneak into Milady’s chamber and deal with the problem then and there, for Marie’s sake. But no, that wouldn’t solve anything. If Milady didn’t arrive in England to negotiate with Buckingham, the cardinal would simply despatch another emissary. His Eminence wanted Buckingham to withdraw his troops from French soil, and he didn’t care which one of his minions would conduct the relevant negotiations.

No, stopping Milady would accomplish nothing.

Accordingly, I spoke a little prayer for Milady’s mission to succeed. If she failed, the cardinal would release Marie’s letter and possibly have her arrested or expatriated. Her exile to Tours was inconvenient enough; I was not looking forward to the prospect of seeing her exiled to Spain or Belgium.

I briefly toyed with the idea of stopping the cardinal instead, but that would accomplish even less. France was in a state of turmoil as it was. Taking out the great strategist at the helm would throw us all into chaos. And it was one thing to frolic on confined battlefields and drink the blood of men who had the misfortune to brim over with virility. It was a completely different thing to witness civilisation collapse and commoners, women and children being slaughtered, as was currently happening in the Holy Roman Empire.

No, eating the cardinal was not an option.

In my pocketbook, I had one or two blank pages, which I tore out and, availing myself of the host’s pen and ink, wrote a note to Marie.

_My dear Cousin,_

_His Eminence, the cardinal, whom God preserve for the happiness of France and the confusion of the enemies of the kingdom, is on the point of putting an end to the heretic rebellion of La Rochelle. It is probable that the succour of the English fleet will never even arrive in sight of the place. I will even venture to say that I am certain M. de Buckingham will be prevented from setting out by a twist of fate. Just like our Lord loves and cherishes the meanest of His creatures, the cardinal cherishes the smallest incidents, the smallest coincidences to turn them into powerful weapons. Not even a humble seamstress’ letter is beneath his notice if he thinks it may benefit his noble course. He gathers those small grains of sand until they form veritable mortar, which he uses to erect a rampart to arrest his enemy in his stride. His Eminence is the most illustrious politician of times past, of times present, and probably of times to come. He would extinguish the sun if the sun incommoded him. Rejoice in those happy tidings, dear cousin, and rejoice in the fact that your fate is in the cardinal’s hands. Be assured, then, of seeing me soon return._

As fate would have it, a caravan of silk merchants had stopped at the Red Dovecot for a repast, who were on their way back to Tours. I followed one of them outside, approached him with my most winning smile, the one that showed all my teeth in a brilliant display. He quickly agreed to carry my letter to my beloved, much-missed cousin for a small consideration. By the unfocused look in his eyes and his bland smile, I could tell that he would not betray my confidence, for he was not a man who would willingly risk being plagued by blood-soaked nightmares for the rest of his short life.

When I returned to the chamber, Athos was on his way out. Ostensibly, to go on the lookout, because certain expressions of our host had given him reason to think the road was not safe. “The rest,” Athos said, reassuring me tremendously, “concerns myself; don't be uneasy about that.”

***

“Be careful, Athos,” Aramis’ hand clung to my sleeve.

“Don’t worry, my chyortik,” I responded, “I won’t lose my head.” I knew not whence he had returned, but I could infer it was from no call of nature, unless he considered the tingling in his prick that thoughts of his nymph sent there to be such a call. I pulled him in for a quick kiss on that perfidious but beautiful mouth and saluted Porthos from the door.

No doubt, he had contrived some way to send word to his exiled mistress. It was only right, and, in truth, I could not blame him for acting as a true lover and a gentleman. But nevertheless, thoughts of Marie de Rohan suffused me with rage. The rage would have to be controlled for the time being, for I had other plans to attend to.

My heart pounded in my chest as I rode out, ostensibly towards the camp. What I had heard through those stovepipes had given me pause. Here, within reach, was d’Artagnan’s Milady. His so called tigress who still called for his blood. Some might say it was ironic that it was this woman to whose defense we had come earlier in the evening, but I did not see the hand of irony in it. This was the hand of Fate. For whatever reason, the gods kept putting this woman in my path, the same way they had put d’Artagnan in my path. And if he was my burden to bear, then so was she. But first, I had to find out if she was the same Anne de Breuil whom Olivier de La Fère had set out to ruin in London. 

And if she was? I was not sure what I would do. I had left that unknown woman to her own destiny, or so I thought when I had dispatched her husband. Whatever wealth and freedom she currently enjoyed, without realizing it, she was indebted to me for it. And by extension, any evil she would wreak upon this world, was also mine? Did the hand of the Moirai extend this far? Was it I who had measured out Milady’s thread, or had it been Lachesis? As Aramis always liked to point out, our gods were not infallible.

Regardless, d’Artagnan’s life was in my hands for safe-keeping. This woman meant to do him harm and I meant to stop her, if it was within my power. He had made a grave mistake, but was it up to her to decide whether he paid for it with his life? Perhaps. Perhaps it was up to her. He had taken something from her, a thief in the night, and now she would take something from him. 

But he was my responsibility, and I had already resolved his head would stay firmly attached for as long as possible.

I sat astride my horse in the darkness of the forest and watched my companions and the cardinal ride off. I did not have Aramis’ ability to bedevil, and, to be entirely honest, I did not have a precise plan. I only knew I had to get inside and see this woman for myself.

Apparently, I did not need Aramis’ hypnotic ability, for I was allowed up to the lady’s chamber without any further questions. I halted at the entry way; her door had been left half-ajar by the careless M. le cardinal, and I could see her figure through the aperture. She appeared to be tying her bonnet, evidently in preparation for departure. From my position at the door, I could not yet see her face, but her hair fell from her hat in alluring blond tendrils.

I pulled my hat over my eyes and wrapped my cloak around me as if I was raising my shield from the days of yore. It was time to face this Medusa and see which one of us would turn to stone.

I took a step inside the room and bolted the door behind me. She twirled around at the sound of the bolt, her eyes (as blue as they had both told me) opened wide, her lips (the color that would make corals blush) parted gently, her black brows furrowed in consternation as she veered upon me with the force of one accustomed to giving orders.

“Who are you, and what do you want of me?”

It was she. Anne de Breuil. Comtesse de La Fère. Milady de Winter. I recognized her from the portrait Grimaud had stolen. And she was… beautiful.

I froze and stood chained to my spot like a statue, indeed. Perhaps the Medusa metaphor had not been a hyperbole after all. She had asked me a question, and was awaiting a reply. At last, I swallowed, and let my cloak fall open. I removed my hat and took a step towards her. It had been ten years since I had killed her husband and assumed his name. I had not worn it officially for the past five years. The comte de La Fère was dead.

“Do you recognize me, Madame?” I asked. She took a step towards me, but I could tell from the way she held herself that she was afraid to look me directly in the eye. Perhaps the ghost of her dead husband haunted her still. She could not tell her lovers apart in the dark before, and the room was barely lit. Our eyes met for the briefest moment and she recoiled, her beautiful white hand, like a moth, alighting upon her heaving breast.

“That’s good,” I said. “I see you do recognize me.”

“The comte de La Fère!” she uttered and backed away until buttressed by the wall.

Long live the comte de La Fère. She was terrified of him still. My old pal the count had really done a number on his countess, not that I could blame her, he did, after all, attempt to have her hanged. Her fear blinded her to my advantage, so I pressed on.

“Yes, Milady, the comte de La Fère, in person, come back from the other world on purpose to have the pleasure of seeing you. Let’s sit down, then, and talk, as Monseigneur le cardinal says.” 

I was imbued with outbursts of eloquence that was buoyed by the fact that at this precise moment I knew everything and she knew nothing, including some things that I was not even going to mention. Slowly and methodically, I had recounted all her transgressions to her, past and future, leaving out nothing, not even her inability to tell one man from another in the darkness of her room, a darkness that was so necessary to hide that brand upon her shoulder. So she was Olivier’s Anne after all. It still did not excuse what d’Artagnan had done, but at least I knew that I wasn’t having dialogue with a lady in the traditional sense of the word.

“Are you Satan himself?” she hissed at me, livid and pale as death.

“Perhaps,” I responded. Lucifer was an angel once before he questioned his God. And what was she? Truly a demon, as her late husband had suspected? A woman set upon my path by the Fates? Another one of Hera’s tricks? Or only a mortal? Aramis would know. Aramis would have smelled it on her.

She _intoxicated_ , as the count had said. The soul of a poet, the face of an angel. More beautiful still in her righteous fury, for I could not deny her legitimate claim to vengeance against the Gascon. She terrified me.

“But, in any case,” I resumed my speech, “Listen very well to this: assassinate the Duke of Buckingham, or have him assassinated, it matters little to me!” He tried to kiss Aramis. He could die a thousand deaths for all I cared. “I don’t know him, and besides, he’s an Englishman.” It was time for me to come right out with it, and this was where I could not afford to stammer. “But do not touch with the tip of your finger a single hair on the head of d’Artagnan, who is a faithful friend whom I love and defend, or, I swear to you on my Father’s… bones, that attempted crime will be your last.”

Her eyes were cold as she fixed them on me. “M. d’Artagnan,” she squeezed through her teeth as if that name burned her lips, “had cruelly offended me. M. d’Artagnan will die.”

Hades’ balls, but she reminded me so much of Eris! Her righteous rage, her fierce beauty, her glacial resolve. I wanted her. I wanted to take her. 

I… _no_. I could practically hear Grimaud in my head, telling me to be a man again. From somewhere deep inside me, the rage that I had suppressed before returning to the inn had risen up with bile. Is this what Aramis felt towards his nymph? This blinding desire?

“Really, is it possible for someone to offend you, Madame?” I laughed, my own laughter ringing cruelly in my ears. “He offended you,” I mocked her, “and he will die?”

“He will die,” she repeated, more Fury than woman in that moment. “She first, then he.”

She went too far. It was one thing to threaten my human parrot and his lady love of half an hour, but to do it in a way that was simultaneously so terrifying and arousing... No, that took demonic skill. My cock twitched inside my breeches. Another moment in this woman’s company and I would be doomed all over. My vision went black and I rose from my chair intent on wiping this demon from my path. My body knew what to do even as my mind rebelled against the action, and my hand reached for my loaded pistol.

She pressed against the tapestry, her golden hair forming a terrified halo around her head. If she was a demon indeed, she was not showing me her true face. I raised my arm and leveled the pistol at her forehead. 

She trembled. Did she have to die for my moment of weakness? I faltered again. I could not kill this woman like Olivier had attempted to. I had to give her another chance.

“Madam,” I said, reconsidering, “you are going to give me the paper that the cardinal signed for you this very instant, or by my soul, I will blow your brains out.” Another moment and I would change my mind again. “You have one second to make up your mind,” I pointed out.

She had been my responsibility, after all. I could always finish what the count started. And save d’Artagnan from her vengeance falling upon him.

But she had chosen life and quickly handed the carte blanche over to me. “Take it and be cursed!”

I laughed, oh how I laughed.

I had caught up with the cardinal and the rest easily enough, galloping cross country to cut them off at the pass on approach to the camp. With the cardinal’s gratitude and his password, our services were no longer required and we were dismissed. Once we reached our sector and exchanged passwords to safely be allowed to camp, I pulled Aramis aside.

“I need your help,” I whispered in his ear.

“I thought you could survive one night without…”

“Aramis, I need your _help_ ,” I repeated, looking into his black eyes that glowed with preternatural glee in the moonlight.

“Anything,” he said quietly.

“I need a horse.”

“You _have_ a horse.” He persisted in not comprehending.

I had formulated a plan on my way back. It was true, I had let Milady live, but as long as she was out there, her dream of vengeance was a threat to d’Artagnan, possibly to all of us. Mostly, I was afraid that she would come to her senses and realize I was not the man she had taken me for. She could expose us all. It was too big a risk to take. No, she couldn’t just be unleashed into the world. Yet, I could not very well kill her.

“I need _another_ horse,” I explained, patiently, “one that I do not plan on returning.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“If you could be so kind.”

“I’ll be right back.”

The Gods had deemed fit to make my erastes lost at sea for ten long years. Surely, it would not be a huge inconvenience for them to do the same thing for my ‘wife.’ I just needed to have a civil conversation with my uncle, and Poseidon had always been fond of horses.

Aramis came back on horseback, leading two more steeds by the reigns. I leapt into the saddle and pressed his hand in silent gratitude. 

“Promise me,” Aramis said as we rode out of the camp again, the cardinal’s password serving as a carte blanche of its own for us to come and go as we please, “that we are not going to get crushed by the Bull from the Sea like poor Hippolytus.”

“I wish you had chosen any other story than that of Hippolytus,” I wiped perspiration from my brow. Was what I was about to do as bad as what Phaedra had done when she had falsely claimed Hippolytus had violated her?

“At least we’re not baking cakes,” Aramis laughed and, when I did not respond, added quickly, “We’re not. Are we?”

“No cakes,” I replied and spurred the horses onwards towards the bluff overlooking the sea.

I had told Aramis to stand behind as I led the sacrificial horse to the precipice. I soothed it with my hands and waited for the animal to bow its noble head in indication of acceptance of its destiny, and then I slit the throat with my poignard and pushed the carcass into the sea below. The sound of it smashing against the waves summoned me to the ritual, as did the scent of the animal’s blood.

_O, Poseidon,_  
_Great Bull from the Sea,_  
_Maker of Storms, Shaker of Earth,  
_ _Lord of the Wave: I invoke you!_

I listened for the sound of the waves, I felt the wind pick up and whip into me, as if wanting to toss me over the cliff into the seafoam below.

_Lead her bark astray,_  
_Let her be lost upon the waves,_  
_Let her be lost upon the rocks,  
_ _Let her find no port or harbor._

Below me, I could hear the sea nymphs laughing with demonic glee as they reveled in my humble sacrifice.

 _Do this for me, Poseidon,_  
_And we shall sing your praises in the loudest voice,_  
_In the world between Olympus and Tartarus,_  
_On Earth, in Elysium, and Hades,  
_ _With the voice of every water-borne soul._

I heard His answer in the wind, I heard His answer in the waves. It was done. I bowed my head in gratitude and then I felt Aramis’ arms wrap around me from behind.

“Step away from the cliff now,” he whispered into my ear. But he had no reason to worry; I had no intention of following the sacrificial offering into the waves again. “Never thought I’d see the day you consorted with sea nymphs. What happened?”

“I shall explain,” I responded and took his hand in mine. For now, we were safe, and so was d’Artagnan. As safe as a human man could reasonably be at war.

***

A dragoon, a light-horseman and a Swiss walked into a bar. The dragoon fried a goose, the light-horseman made a wager, the Swiss fawned over a false idol. One of them lost his head. Guess who?

But I am getting ahead of myself. The morning after the eventful night at the Red Dovecot, Athos had declared that we had to warn d’Artagnan that Milady wanted to kill him. “He knows that already,” I’d pointed out, but to no avail.

“Milady has procured the cardinal’s assistance and has obtained from him a carte blanche that will permit her to kill d’Artagnan as well as us with impunity,” Athos had said.

“A carte blanche that you took off her,” I’d said. “And we can’t die.”

“Aramis. Don’t be obstinate,” Athos had said, and I’d fetched my favourite Book of Hours, the charming little one, bound in blue velvet, sat down at the table in the antechamber of our tent and begun to say my prayers. Aloud.

Once d’Artagnan had joined us, the four of us, plus Grimaud, set off for the inn of the Parpaillot, for the walls of our tent were too thin for the sort of conversation that we were about to have. That was where we encountered the dragoon, the light-horseman and the Swiss, all of whom were in the most convivial and garrulous mood. Athos, who had sacrificed a horse, invoked the old gods and forfeited sleep last night, was not very optimistic about the outcome of our council. “We shall get into some pretty quarrel or other, and we have no need of one just now,” he muttered.

Accordingly, my crafty godling contrived a scheme that removed us out of earshot of our comrades without arousing any suspicion whatsoever. It was a grandiose plan. A scheme worthy of the old gods themselves: Athos wagered with the dragoon, the light-horseman and the Swiss that the four of us (plus Grimaud) would have breakfast in the bastion St. Gervais, which had been captured and dismantled by our troops last night and which remained under enemy fire.

And so the four of us (plus Grimaud as our a vanguard and catering corps) walked to the bastion, had breakfast under the eyes of the Rochellais and two thousand of our own men, who witnessed our fortunate but wild undertaking from the camp, and held our inconspicuous council there. That was what Athos always meant by hiding in plain sight, I supposed.

Athos, who had assumed the command of our expedition and was leading us with ease and grace, informed d’Artagnan that he had seen Milady last night. D’Artagnan was lifting a glass to his lips; but at the name of Milady, his hand trembled so that he was obliged to put the glass on the ground again for fear of spilling the contents.

“You saw your wi-”

“Hush!” interrupted Athos. “You forget, my dear, you forget that these gentlemen are not initiated into my family affairs like yourself. I have seen Milady.”

Porthos and I exchanged a look. What new lunacy?

“But who _is_ this Milady?” Porthos asked. Of course. He had never met her, and neither Athos nor I had disclosed to him d’Artagnan’s ignoble conduct towards her.

Milady, who fascinated me more and more, was a demon-witch risen from the deepest, darkest pit of Hell, where even Dante feared to tread. A formidable creature, whose soul dripped blackest pitch and whose eyes blasted flames. So far, she had attempted to have d’Artagnan shot and poisoned, and last night she had demanded his head of the cardinal. She rode fire-breathing dragons with the same elegant ease as a lady of the court may ride a cob in the Luxembourg.

Or so I was led to assume, judging by Athos’ tale and d’Artagnan’s reaction to it. The Gascon contemplated blowing his own brains out to escape her, because committing the deadly sin of self-slaughter was an excellent way out for a man who had the devil’s own for an enemy.

The following hour was occupied with making plans of how to best proceed from here. Nobody apart from me knew that Athos had sacrificed a horse to his maritime uncle for the purpose of detaining Milady at sea for as long as possible. Nobody, not even Athos and myself, knew how long the enchantment would last. The old gods were not as all-powerful as they used to be in days of yore, and Poseidon’s influence in the Atlantic Ocean was not as great as in the Aegean Sea. Marie’s connections would have been more helpful in these waters, but… well.

Had I known what Athos planned to do when he asked me to procure a horse by bedeveling a brother-in-arms, I would have refused. I was pretty sure I would have refused. In many ways I was glad that he had not informed me of his intentions in advance, for when it came to his interests versus Marie’s, I didn’t know which one I would have chosen. What was done was done, and I would be called upon to provide a solution soon. For now, I waited.

D’Artagnan perked up considerably after he had learned that Milady had quit the shores of France. He was, however, indecently shocked when he heard that she was meaning to assassinate the Duke of Buckingham or have him assassinated, calling the entire scheme infamous and thus giving another proof of how little he grasped the intricacies of political intrigue.

“As to that,” Athos told him. “I beg you to believe that I care very little about it.”

“How?" D’Artagnan was flabbergasted. “You care little if she kills Buckingham or causes him to be killed? But the duke is our friend.”

“The duke is English,” Athos explained with truly Christian patience, and I wondered briefly against whom d’Artagnan thought we were fighting on the present campaign. Athos helpfully supplied the answer, which I had considered obvious but which apparently was not. “The duke fights against us. Let her do what she likes with the duke.”

“A moment!” D'Artagnan was unwilling to understand. “I will not abandon Buckingham thus. He gave us some very fine horses.” That was interesting. Were four fine horses all that it took to sway the Gascon’s loyalties and induce him to side with the enemy? I filed the thought away for later.

“Besides,” I added unctuously, looking at Athos. "God desires the conversion and not the death of a sinner.”

“Amen!” said Athos, returning my gaze with a matching one of his own. “And we will return to that subject later, if such be your pleasure.” The thrill of anticipation trickled down my spine. “But what for the moment engaged my attention most earnestly,” he said, turning back to the Gascon, “and I am sure you will understand me, d’Artagnan, was the getting from this woman a kind of carte blanche which she had extorted from the cardinal, and by means of which she could with impunity get rid of you and perhaps of us.”

“But this creature _must_ be a demon,” Porthos said around a bite of bread, holding out his plate to me as I was cutting up a fowl. His helpful suggestion to strangle the lady with his bare hands did not meet with much approval. Neither did d’Artagnan’s idea to go to England and warn Buckingham, for, as Athos patiently explained once again, Buckingham was our enemy and warning him would amount to treason.

Predictably, I had to step in with a suggestion of my own, for it seemed that my friends had been losing sight of the person who was most at risk.

“For shame!” I said to Porthos. “Kill a woman? No, listen to me. I have the true idea.”

“Let us hear your idea, Aramis,” Athos said in that tone of voice that he usually reserved for the darkness of our room. Or tent.

I ignored the way my blood churned and shared my spectacularly ingenious plan with them: “We must inform the queen.”

“Inform the queen!” Athos exclaimed, every word dripping with irony. “And how? Have we relations with the court? Could we send anyone to Paris without it being known in the camp? From here to Paris it is a hundred and forty leagues; before our letter was at Angers we should be in a dungeon.”

He forced me to say it. He knew, of course, that I had written to Marie already, even though I hadn’t told him. He wanted to force me to admit it.

“As to remitting a letter with safety to her Majesty,” I said, as my blood rushed through me, propelled by anger. “I will take that upon myself. I know a clever person at Tours-” I stopped on seeing Athos smile.

“Well, do you not adopt this means, Athos?” said d’Artagnan.

“I do not reject it altogether,” said Athos, his mocking, heathen smile firmly attached to his lips. “But I wish to remind Aramis that he cannot quit the camp, and that nobody but one of ourselves is trustworthy. That two hours after the messenger has set out, all the Capuchins, all the police, all the black caps of the cardinal will know your letter by heart, and you and your, ah, _clever person_ will be arrested.”

Fortunately, the Rochellais beat the general alarm at that point and we decided it was time to withdraw. We returned to our camp, where we were welcomed as the heroes that we were, celebrated for our ability to not get ourselves killed. Nothing was heard but cries of, “Vivent les gardes! Vivent les mousquetaires!” as our comrades pressed our hands, embraced and kissed us. The dragoon, the light-horseman and the Swiss acknowledged that the wager was lost. The inn of the Parpaillot, where the wine cellars were rapidly being drained of their stock, vibrated with Homeric laughter, while Athos pressed me up against the wall outside, tucked away in the shadow of the stable.

“A clever person at Tours, Aramis?” he growled, pinning me to the wall with his hips.

“Your _wife_?”

For a moment, his confidence faltered. “It was a ruse-” he muttered.

“Of course it was.” I leaned in and tugged at his lip with my teeth. “You’re getting good at it,” I murmured. “Did you say all those things to impress d’Artagnan, I wonder?”

“I was hoping,” he ground his hips into me and pressed his lips to my temple, “I was hoping to impress chyortik a bit. Your nymph is not the only one who knows how to plot.”

My heart thudded against my ribs. Athos sounded neither angry nor sneering when speaking of Marie; that was unprecedented.

“And what did you mean by climbing that wall, Athos?” I hissed, slipping my hands between our both bodies to unfasten belts and buttons. “Was that to impress me as well? Did you mean to prove your invulnerability by presenting yourself to enemy fire? I half expected you to rend your shirt for them.” The buttons undone, I pushed my hand under the linen and encountered hot, damp flesh. “You flaunt your immortality too blatantly, my godling,” I whispered against his mouth. “One day the boy will notice-”

“He believes I don’t set a great store by life,” Athos said, rubbing himself against me.

“Don’t you?” I cupped his face and our eyes met. “Don’t you care if you live or die?”

“ _Aramis,_ ” he breathed.

I grinned at him, flashing my fangs. “We don’t have much time.” I moved my hand from his face to his shoulder and pushed him down to his knees, leaning back against the wall like I had done all those centuries ago in Krakow. Athos looked up at me and then lowered his gaze to where my hand lay curled around my own cock. He licked his lips, wetting them for me before he pushed his face into my groin. The heat of his mouth as he sucked me in, the lips closed tightly around my cock, his tongue pressing against the underside as our heartbeats throbbed into each other. His hands on my hips, holding me in place even as I tried to thrust deeper into his throat, to hear him choke around me. I grabbed his hair to tug him closer, but he ignored me and pulled back, twirling his tongue around my cock.

“Keep still, Aramis,” he commanded, moving his lips against the tip of my cock. Cold December air hit my damp skin and I shuddered.

“Get on with it then!”

Athos smirked, twisting that beautiful mouth into that heathen smile of his, and then he blew at my cock. My hips jerked away and I laughed. “You bastard.”

“Mmh,” Athos agreed with his mouth full. And then for a while he didn’t speak at all, putting his mouth to better use by sucking my essence out of me as vigorously as a bloodsucking fiend might suck his victim dry.

“Oh fuck!” I groaned, my knees buckling and my blood boiling under my skin as Athos licked me clean, swallowing my seed and lapping stray drops off my balls with gentle swipes of his tongue. The tip of his tongue slipped between my thighs, wet lips and hot breath ghosting over my skin. Suddenly, a filthy oath:

“Sapperlot!”

Athos jumped, hand falling from my hip to his, to the hilt of his sword. I swayed when he let go of me and steadied myself with a hand against his arm as he rose to his feet, turning away from me. Over his shoulder, I spotted the figure of a man. The Swiss stood in the shadows, staring at us, transfixed.

“Potzblitz!” he added with Alemannic eloquence. “Don’t vorry yourselfes, messieurs,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of appeasement. “Such things happen when one is at var. Avay from one’s sveetheart.” He had the audacity to wink at us.

Athos froze. I could feel him get rigid with indignation on being so jovially addressed – by a man, at that, who, like all his comrades in the Swiss guards, had been openly admiring Athos whenever Athos condescended to talk to him. I finished buttoning myself up, pushed Athos aside gently with a hand at his arm and strode past him towards the Swiss, smiling as I walked.

He didn’t move. He didn’t attempt to defend himself. What he had witnessed had aroused him, I could taste it on his blood. That flavour of virility and lust prickled on my tongue and poured into my heart. I raised my eyes to Athos and watched him watching me, his wet lips parted, his eyes gleaming like black diamonds. He was palming himself through the fabric of his breeches and my own arousal built again.

I let the Swiss drop to the ground without taking my eyes off Athos and stood, licking my teeth and lips clean.

“Come here, Aramis.” I was by his side in a flash, and he pushed me up against the wall again, moaning into my mouth as he exposed himself with frantic hands. “Your mouth,” he panted into the kiss, “please, Aramis, now.”

I knelt before him, my beautiful false idol, sucking his swollen cock deep into my throat. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, he was filling me out, the thick piece of flesh in my mouth scalded me and I dragged my head back, leaving dark smears of blood on his skin. Athos pushed into my mouth, a short, shallow thrust, a helpless jolt of his body as he spilled himself messily over my lips. He sank to his knees, panting, and kissed me, opening his mouth and lapping his seed and the blood of the Swiss off my skin. “Shall I fetch Grimaud?” he muttered, jerking his head towards the dead man in the shadows. “To deal with that?”

“No need,” I said. “Nobody will know. He drank too much and died of apoplexy.” I laughed. “Struck down by the hand of God.”

“Thinking very highly of yourself, aren’t you, chyortik?” Athos mocked, pushing my hair back from my sweaty brow. “You may be utterly divine, my love,” he purred, “but you are not, technically, a deity. Not even,” he laughed and pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of my mouth, “not even a saint.”


	7. Two Varieties of Demons

**La Rochelle, December 1627**

My dear Cousin,

Many, many years ago, when you were looking for your lost friends, I undertook to convey your letters to them. The courier I had found for you was, as I’m sure you’ll agree, as diligent as he was reliable. I assure you, beloved cousin-german - the messenger who has handed over the epistle you are perusing this very moment is just as trustworthy.

It is for that reason that I dare send you more than a short note, my love. I can tell you what you want to know. Are you prepared to heed my advice like you used to, in the halcyon days of youth? Alas, I believe that I have been replaced, and that you are more willing to listen to the council of another these days. Your prayers have been answered and your god guides you, mon cher, in a way that I never have.

Do not be alarmed, Cousin. I am not reproaching you for your regained faith. Religious fervour sets your soul alight as much as your eyes, and the day you take your orders will be a day of great joy for me. For, as I told you on a summer evening more than two years ago, the robe suits you exceedingly well and I shall be glad to see you put it on. And take it off.

As a man of the robe, you will be entitled to be my confessor; permit me therefore to make you a confession in anticipation of your upcoming ordination: I believe your god is leading you astray, and I don’t trust the friend on whose behalf you have written to me. He may be the prodigal son, but his sins weigh heavily and have never been atoned. In his eagerness to seduce a married woman, he has deceived two others, one of whom you placed in service with me yourself. The poor girl had indeed fallen in love with him, the man who used her chamber to spy on her mistress. That was where he, as she told me, “seduced” her. Here exact words were: “I had the less motive to resist, resistance would make so much noise. Therefore, I surrendered.” She cried when she told me that, my love. Two days later, your friend came to her chamber again, only to pass through the connecting door into the room of the mistress and pass himself off as that lady’s lover. I know that your god is merciful and that he believes that he can save that young man by imparting virtue and nobility on him; but I believe that a viper’s soul is rotten to the core.

There. Here endeth my confession. You may now understand why I have been reluctant to provide a reply to your inquiry after the whereabouts of the real, the true, the one and only love of your friend; the love on whose altar he sacrificed the hearts and bodies of others. I think I shall endeavour to resolve that dilemma through contemplation and prayer: I shall make up my mind to set out for Stenay, where my sister has placed our little servant in the convent of the Carmelites. This poor child is quite resigned, as she knows she cannot live elsewhere without the salvation of her soul being in danger. Nevertheless, if the affairs of our family are arranged, as we hope they will be, I believe she will run the risk of being damned and will return to those she regrets, particularly as she knows they are always thinking of her.

Indeed, since she last saw the man around whom all her thoughts and desires revolve, she has never stopped to long for him. Nothing would give her greater pleasure and comfort than to see him again and to listen to his declarations for longer than the half hour that their intercourse lasted when they met and were parted two and a half years ago. The tender bud of her love has blossomed into a flower that overwhelms her faculties with its kaleidoscope of colours and its bouquet of smells, and it is all that she can think of and talk of. Meanwhile, she is not very wretched; what she most desires is a letter from her intended. I know that such viands pass with difficulty through convent gratings. But after all, as I have given you proofs, my dear cousin, I am not unskilled in such affairs, and I will take charge of the commission. For I would not wish to see two such tender and devoted hearts separated forever; having read several of her effusions, I believe that they truly deserve each other.

You now know everything that you need to know and I leave the final decision in your hands. If you believe that the little servant should be reunited with the man who in her eyes is the magnificent hero of a chivalric romance, you know where his quest must commence. My conscience is clear, for I have told you everything I know about this affair. Their fate is now in your hands, beloved cousin. There! How does it feel to play with the destinies of humans? This is what you have been born to do, my love, for I believe you will not know a greater pleasure in life.

Judge well!

Adieu, my dear cousin. Tell us news of yourself as often as you can; that is to say, as often as you can with safety. I embrace you.

Marie Michon

***

I was not sure when the dreams started, for at first they were unremarkable. I’d see a ship at sea, a cloud of mist surrounding it, sails unfurled in the wind. Now and then a woman would come up on deck and gaze out into the distance, her eyes unfocused, her brows furrowed. I stood by the mast, and she did not see me. But I saw her. Milady de Winter. The countess de La Fère. My wife.

Sometimes I’d wander around the ship, aimlessly. I’d go to her cabin and watch her write at the little desk while the waves sent the inkwell sashaying from one corner to the next, much to her annoyance. To whom did she write? I could see the letters drawn by her hand, but my mind refused to make sense of them.

She was lost at sea, in a mystical spell to which I had condemned her. But she was safe there, too, cradled by the waves, sung to her sleep by the daughters of Oceanus.

Then, one night, as I descended through Morpheus’ fog onto the deck of the ship, things changed. She had stood by the stern, her cloak banding about by the wind, echoing the flapping of the sails. She turned around and her eyes had fixed on me.

“You,” she spoke. “I knew it. I knew you were behind this. Unhand me from this enchantment!” she commanded me.

“Madame,” I spoke, keeping my voice level, “do reclaim possession of your faculties.”

Her hand shot out towards me and pressed into my chest as if she meant to tear out my heart. I took a step back and felt the mainmast behind me.

“I knew you were a warlock when I first laid eyes on you.”

“And yet, you took me for your husband,” I grinned, amused despite the fact that she wasn’t entirely wrong. Her cheeks glowed brightly, naturally rouged by the wind. Her eyes shone like topaz.

“Why do you torment me?” her voice trembled. “What have I ever done to you?” But her nails sank into my flesh where her fingers lay and my pain underlied the tenderness of her fresh voice.

“Your confinement is regretful,” I said, bowing my head, “Yet, I’m afraid it was necessary. You seem set on a course from which you will not return if you persist.”

“Because you would kill me?”

“Not I, Madame.”

“No, you have already killed me once!” she laughed and leaned closer, her eyes mere inches away from my own. “But you looked different then. You smelled different too.”

I placed my hands upon her waist where I could feel the whalebones of her corset biting into her flesh, and pushed her away.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Tell me your real name!”

“You first, Madame. It is evident enough it is neither Anne de Breuil nor Milady Clarick.”

“I shall call you Athos,” she said, and her eyes glowed preternaturally.

I awoke in a cold sweat. I had told her my name when I had seen her at the Red Dovecot, my _real_ name. There was nothing else to read into that dream. Besides, it was only a dream. But it was also possible that I had rent the veil between the physical world and the gods again, and by a blowback of my own invocation gotten somehow sucked back in. Poseidon’s ways were always mysterious, and at times caused madness to those who were subject to them.

The siege at La Rochelle continued. We waited for the outcome of our missives. I knew, of course, that Milady would not be landing at Dover or any other English port any time soon. Still, sending Planchet had been a good idea, if only to keep d’Artagnan otherwise occupied. As for Aramis, I was certain he had more than one way to send correspondence to his nymph.

I dreamt of her again. Milady on the ship, trapped in the mist of my own making.

“The cardinal,” she said to me, “Will be expecting me at the convent of the Carmelites in Bethune upon my return from my mission.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Ask Aramis.”

“Ask Aramis what?”

“Ask him if that was agreed upon before the cardinal left.”

“But why are you telling me this?”

“So that you know I’m truly who I say I am.” She smiled at me and the dream dissipated.

That dream bothered me more than the ones that came before it. If my beloved confirmed her words (which in fact he did), indeed then I could rely on the fact that somehow I was communing with the real Milady in my dreams. On the other hand, she had spoken his name, and that knowledge alone was enough to give me sleepless nights.

We were both known to her. This woman was a danger to us all: she could expose us. She might even expose our true natures.

“I hope you’re lost in here forever,” I told her the next time she came to me in my dream, or rather I to her.

“What are you afraid of, Athos? What could I - a woman - possibly do to a warrior like you?”

Did she know of the curse? The way her eyes gleamed in the fog sent shivers down my spine. Just as at the Red Dovecot, my blood rose up and I felt overwhelmed with desire for her. The way she said my name made the hairs rise up along the nape of my neck. I wondered if she could tell.

“What is this? What are you?” Some kind of a bedevilment was upon us, I only hoped it was one of my own making.

“You do not think, do you, son of Zeus, that you can invoke the power of Poseidon and not pay for it in return? Do you not know that energy cannot be created? For a spell to take place, a sacrifice must be made.”

“Who are you?” I repeated, my loins on fire as I looked at her. A siren. An enchantress. A demon. A goddess.

“One door opens, another must close.”

“Do not speak to me in Delphic riddles, woman!” I slammed her bodily against the mainmast and her head rolled back, exposing the column of her swanlike white neck, with no scar or marks on it. If the count ever did hang her, he either did a worse job than I thought, or she really was a fiend out of Hell that had resurrected her. Had Satan’s power repaired her skin the way I had seen my blood repair Aramis? She laughed, a Gorgon’s laugh, and wrapped her arms around me.

“You should take me, husband. You know you want to. I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it in the way you hold your body, how you try not to press your hips into me.” Her hand trailed to the small of my back, pushing my pelvis towards hers. “Are you not mine, husband? For richer, for poorer? Till death do us part?”

“Enough!” I pushed her off of myself and woke up.

 _Thank you; be easy._ That’s what Lord Winter wrote in response to our warning. The demon, I thought, her will alone might be strong enough to break the spell that held her. D’Artagnan, for his part, seemed happy that we had sent a messenger to England, even if by doing so we had committed treason.

I did not dream of her every night, but when I did, I told Aramis and Porthos about it, in the vain hope that by sharing my dreams it would make them not real. I omitted the part where I throbbed to feel her beneath me more and more each time I saw her.

“What do your Jesuit books on demonology say?” I had no hope for answer, but had to start somewhere. “Could she be a demon?”

“I couldn’t say without being physically near her. And we have no way of knowing the source of your dreams,” Aramis said, his hand pressed against my own, but I could tell by the way he would not look at me that he wasn’t sure I wasn’t simply returning to the dark place from whence I had barely escaped with my sanity. “Perhaps, it was a mistake to invoke your uncle. But what’s done is done.”

“Maybe she’s a witch,” Porthos offered. “Did you try drowning her? I hear witches float.”

“Porthos! What crude nonsense!” Aramis wrinkled his nose. “Did your mistress in the Languedoc float?” Porthos scratched his head as if trying to recall any instances of floatation. “Besides, I keep telling you, we don’t kill women. When have we ever killed women?”

He looked at me expectantly but I was lost in my own thoughts. Of the way her breasts heaved when pressed against my chest, the way she bit and licked her lower lip while she talked, the way those blond tendrils fell against her cheek like a ghostly lover’s touch.

“Athos!”

“What? Oh, yes. I mean, no. Of course we don’t kill women.”

“She’s definitely bewitched him,” Porthos shrugged and walked out of the tent.

***

Marie’s letter arrived on an evening in December, on one of those dreamlike days before the old year dies and the new year is born, where man and nature hover breathlessly in a timeless void. The man who handed it to me brought with him a cold piercing blast. Large hailstones rattled on the ground, and snowflakes were scattered around in all directions. He wore a bearskin dress and cloak. His sealskin cap was drawn over his ears, long icicles hung from his beard, and one hailstone after another rolled from the collar of his jacket. He disappeared in the direction of the sea, dragging Snow Maidens in his wake.

I kissed the envelope and pushed the letter under my coat, to warm the cold paper over my heart. I put it between the pages of my breviary to read it, huddling under my cloak by the light of a guttering candle. Porthos was out, gambling with dragoons, and Athos lay on his back, meditating. All of a sudden, he turned his head and smirked at me. “What news?”

I startled. He was watching me with half-lidded eyes, and his mocking smile lingered in the corner of his mouth.

I shook my head and mouthed at him, “Not here.” We had long agreed that the tent was not the right place to discuss matters of treason and intrigue.

Athos shrugged and said: “Let’s go to the beach tomorrow. We can ask d’Artagnan to join us, the sea air will do him good.”

Marie’s messenger had taken snow and hailstorm away when he disappeared into the night, and the next day was white and sunny. We were quite the party of pleasure: the four of us, with our lackeys, our swords and muskets, several bottles, an enormous flagon of Collicure wine, cards, dice and a drumhead that we used as a makeshift table. Reclining on the sand, we attempted to catch one of those rays of the sun so rare at this period of the year. Porthos especially, who missed his ball of sunshine most acutely in those midwinter days, kept casting longing glances skywards and emitted deep sighs fit to melt the stoniest of hearts. My friends were preparing to listen to me reading the letter. Or rather: selected passages of the letter, for its contents was too delicate to be shared in its entirety and accuracy.

A sonorous and short cry arrested me before I could read more than one or two sentences. “Officer!” It was Grimaud, whom Athos had positioned by the hedge which shielded us from view to warn us when he saw someone approaching.

“You are speaking, you scoundrel!” said Athos, rising upon his elbow, and transfixing Grimaud with his flaming look.

Grimaud therefore added nothing to his speech, but contented himself with pointing his index finger in the direction of the hedge, announcing by this gesture the cardinal and his escort. With a single bound, we were on our feet and saluted with respect. M. de Richelieu was furious. He accused us of plotting and conspiring, accused Grimaud of being a sentinel, accused us of a lack of discipline, and eventually demanded to read the letter that I had concealed upon his arrival. On hearing that it was a woman’s letter, he reminded us that delicate epistles such as these may be shown to a confessor. “And you know I have taken orders,” he concluded, attempting to stare me down. My gaze dropped to his neck and my heart thudded at the mere thought of the virility and power contained in the blood of the most powerful man of France, if not of Europe. I had foregone the blood of Buckingham. My body thrummed with lust for the blood of Richelieu.

“Monseigneur,” said Athos, with a calmness the more terrible because he risked his head in making this reply. “The letter is a woman’s letter, but it is neither signed Marion de Lorme, nor Madame d’Aiguillon.”

My heart thudded and my tongue went dry. By naming two of the cardinal’s mistresses, Athos diverted the worthy churchman’s attention quite effectively. The cardinal became as pale as death, and lightning darted from his eyes. He turned round as if to give an order to his esquires and I wondered how long it would take Athos to come back to life after being executed for this offence and where we would keep his body. No, it was not worth it. I glanced at Athos, who made a step toward the muskets, upon which Porthos and d’Artagnan had already fixed their eyes.

Suddenly, the M. de Richelieu turned back to us, fury fading into a charming smile. “Well, well!” he said, “you are brave young men, proud in daylight, faithful in darkness.” He commended us, made his adieus and we parted the best (albeit the most wrathful and vengeful) of friends.

“That Grimaud kept bad watch!” cried Porthos, who, suffering greatly from the gloom of winter days, had a great inclination to vent his ill humour on somebody.

Grimaud was about to reply to excuse himself. Athos lifted his finger, and Grimaud was silent.

“Would you have given up the letter, Aramis?” asked d’Artagnan.

“As for me,” I said, in my most flutelike tone, “I had made up my mind. If he had insisted upon the letter being given up to him, I would have presented the letter to him with one hand, and with the other I would have run my sword through his body.” And my fangs through his neck.

“I expected as much,” said Athos. “And that was why I threw myself between you and him.”

Porthos rolled his eyes with a grimace of disgust.

I read the letter then. Well, to be entirely accurate, I read selected parts of the letter, those which would give the least offence. I did not desire to pillory d’Artagnan publicly, not before the lackeys and Porthos. Two and a half years had passed since his contemptible “seduction” of Kitty, and perhaps he had learned, under Athos influence, to regulate his behaviour.

I changed “Stenay” to “Bethune” as I read. Should d’Artagnan set out on a quest for his lady love, it couldn’t hurt to send him to a place where he would encounter Milady rather than Mme. Bonacieux. For according to his own words he had loved them both, and of the two women Milady was the one equipped and prepared to defend herself should his mode of seduction not have changed after all.

***

“And what, pray tell, would I do with your headless corpse?” Aramis sniped as soon as the tent flap separated us from our human companion. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was heavily affected by the cold, winter sun.

“Wait for it to grow a new head?” Athos, ever ostensibly unflappable during their tiffs, replied calmly.

“Ugh!” Aramis turned towards me as if he expected me to back his side. “Would it really do that? Please tell me that’s not how it works.” I shrugged, never really feeling the need to contemplate the mechanics of demi-divine regeneration to such an extent.

“It’s possible the head would grow a new body. I’ve never exactly been beheaded before,” Athos supplied, unhelpfully.

“So you thought you’d try it out today with the cardinal? To see what happens?”

“Versus what, Aramis? Let you kill him and drain him of his blood in front of all those humans? In front of d’Artagnan?”

“Oh,” I suddenly realized what the fight was actually about. “He would’ve had to eat d’Artagnan too.”

“We don’t need that kind of exposure,” Athos huffed, brushing past my brilliant deduction.

“Says the man who presents his entire body to flying bullets every chance he gets! What if one of those bullets hit you in the head, huh? What would you have done then?”

“That would’ve been embarrassing.”

“If you two need me to leave the tent..,” I cut in, my words slicing through the air that was so thick with sexual tension that I could practically smell both of their erections.

“Stay!” they both shouted.

“Oh dear,” I twirled my mustache looking from one of them to the other. “Are you two children going to need me to sleep in between the two of you tonight?”

“Maybe Athos can sleep in d’Artagnan’s tent,” Aramis snapped.

“Or maybe _I_ can!” I interrupted before the situation truly escalated.

“Don’t you dare leave,” Athos pointed a stern and almost paternal finger at me. In some ways, I imagined he resembled his Olympian father quite a bit. Except much less with the uninvited groping.

“Ah…” I paused for emphasis before extending my own fingers at the two of them. “No. You two, work this out. Or I’m moving out.”

And with a jaunty flap of my cape, I quit the tent and left them to no doubt do something horrifically cloying and nauseatingly romantic. I imagined many instances of clasped hands and fevered declarations. A veritable shower of ‘I love yous’ and ‘Never leave mes.’

By the time I beheld them again at night, they beamed at me like two perfect cherubs in those frescos one saw in Church in the Renaissance days. I congratulated myself on my timely escape and the results that were reaped by it.

It occurred to me we were close to Winter Solstice… er… Jesus’ birthday. Ave Him. Regardless, the fact that days would soon start getting longer than nights cheered me immensely.

The Rochellais, despite allegedly having nothing but snow to eat for months, refused to surrender. The siege dragged on interminably, except unlike on Rhodes, there was very little chance of being entertained with an actual sea battle. Not unless Buckingham came. A part of me, much as I would imagine most of the Huguenots, wished that he would indeed come, if only to provide us with much needed diversion.

Yet, despite his would-be assassin being lost at sea thanks to my cousin’s invocation, Buckingham tarried. Spring came, and still no sign of Buckingham. Perhaps he did not love the Queen quite as much as he professed. No sign of the end of the siege either. Little by little, I was beginning to forget what it was we had all been waiting for, and commenced contemplating my retirement.

 _My dulcet darling,_ I wrote to my Procureuse, _My eyes are an empty well of sorrow, having cried out all my tears at our separation. My hands would crush mountains to be able to touch you again. My lips no longer taste food or wine, but only the bitterness of longing. Please send word of your husband’s health._

It was, perhaps, a bit much. But I was not a subtle man.

I signed it, _With all my ardent anticipation, Your Porthos._

***

**March, 1628**

Somewhere between the realms of Poseidon and Morpheus, I sat across Milady de Winter in her cabin, rocked softly by the enchanted waves. Her hair, usually neatly upswept and adorned with jewels or ivory combs, fell down in wild cascades as she bent over the desk in between us and wrote methodically with a steady hand.

“What are you writing, Madame?” I asked.

“A list of my enemies. Would you like to see?”

Without waiting for my reply, she pushed the piece of parchment across the table and turned it about face so that I could read her meticulous cursive.

I looked down at the paper before me, the letters coming into focus for the first time. With each subsequent dream, the world around us grew more solid. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember that I was, in fact, dreaming.

_ d’Artagnan _

I was not surprised to see that name at the top of the list, and underlined heavily. I cast her a somewhat penitent look and read on.

 _Athos_  
_Aramis_  
_Porthos?_

I smiled at the question mark next to Porthos’ name. She did not know what to make of him. Yet, she had clearly designated Aramis into the enemy camp. I cast her another suspicious look and wondered again how much she knew about us, about _him_.

The next name of the list made me laugh.

_Beau-frère_

“What has your brother-in-law done to offend you, Madame?” I asked, lifting my eyes away from the list and focusing on her again. She looked at me, her white, delicate hands fiddling with a large ring on her finger.

“He has not left me his inheritance yet.”

I laughed at that brazen statement, yet admired it for the underlying honesty. I remembered her willful refusal to back down at the Red Dovecot. She had been terrified of me, but she still insisted that d’Artagnan would die.

“And what happened to the baron of Sheffield, your husband?”

“You’re my husband,” she responded, coyly. Her thumb twirled the ring around, drawing my attention to it again.

“I am not your husband,” I looked her straight into the eyes as I spoke. She did not flinch.

“Better you than him.” Her smile was cruel but she was no less beautiful for it. “Good old Olivier. What a bore.” So, she knew. How long had she known? “He loved my imagined virginity more than he loved my much-lauded beauty or my great mind he claimed to be so enamored of.” She laughed, toying with her hair in such a juvenile way that I could almost picture her as she must have been at sixteen when the comte de La Fère had wed her.

“I imagine that’s not an unfair assessment.” I grabbed a hold of her hand and pressed at the top of her ring, unlocking the secret compartment. Inside I found a small, red grain. “Is this what you would have done to Olivier as well? Poison?”

“The deadliest,” she grinned, pearly teeth flashing in the dim light, not unlike Aramis’. She leaned towards me, as if I was her co-conspirator. “No antidote,” she whispered, proudly.

I let go of her hand. “Every poison has an antidote. There’s always a loophole.” I bit my lip lest I speak too much.

“This one does not,” she assured me. “At least none known to man. But do not worry, my darling husband-not-husband. I would never use this on you. You will make me a much better husband than either the count or the baron.”

A shiver ran up my spine and I had to tear my eyes away from her.

“I could never be your husband,” I said dryly.

“Why on earth not?”

“Because you… you’re a woman.”

“What new nonsense is this?” she exclaimed and dissolved in a fit of girlish giggles. “You’re not one of those…” She made a gesture with her hand that was simultaneously charming yet insulting. “I see the way you look at me. You desire me.”

“Nevertheless, Madame, I’m afraid it is impossible.”

“In thought and in deed?” she leaned in as she whispered this and I felt a fire rush from my face to my loins. I averted my eyes again and looked down at the parchment in front of me once more to study the list.

There was one more name listed beneath ours that I did not recognize.

_The headsman of Bethune_

“The headsman of Bethune?” I frowned. “What the devil has he ever done to you?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she winked at me and the dream dissolved around us in the rays of aurora.

I told Aramis about the dream (again leaving out certain parts of our discussion that made me blush) as soon as I woke up, lest I forget it.

“Bethune? Isn’t that where the cardinal told her to wait for him?” I asked. He nodded pensively, his fingers tracing the veins of my own hands as they lay on my chest. “What does it mean?”

“She tells you enough to make you think it’s all true without giving anything away.”

“Why is she telling me anything at all?”

His lips trailed over mine gently. It’s been too long since he had fed on me, and my blood was beginning to boil over at his proximity. Sometimes his chivalric self-restraint drove me more mad than dreams of d’Artagnan’s would-be assassin.

“Aramis,” I bit down gently on his lower lip and closed my eyes. His breath and pulse quickened and he pressed closer to me.

Our tent at La Rochelle, which was anticipated to be a long term residence, was much more luxurious than our makeshift lodging at Villeroy, affording us our own partition. It shielded the grateful Porthos from having to see us, albeit not from hearing us.

“Had it occurred to you that it’s all literally just in your head?” His hair, which he hadn’t taken time to curl properly yet, tumbled over his arm and into my mouth. I bit the stray lock defiantly. “No, I suppose you do not trade in axioms.” He pulled his hair out of my mouth and replaced it with his tongue.

To my great chagrin, at that precise moment the reveille sounded.

***

**June, 1628**

A demon haunted my lover’s dreams. She lured him away from me and pushed him deeper into my arms: for when he woke, his hands and mouth sought mine, like those of a drowning man. He was adrift again, floating away from me as he attempted to cling on, and I wondered when he would drown. He had consorted with the gods of the sea and has not yet paid the price for the enchantment. The waves, as I knew from Marie, always claimed their due. I wondered if I was strong enough to keep us both afloat.

There was nothing I could do to bolster his strength. He was of divine stock: firm, unyielding, eternal. Unchanged and unchangeable. His nature was timeless and perpetual, his powers lasted forever. He was the rock upon which I had built my church. Waves had been breaking against the rock for millennia without eroding it. He knew how to last, but he did not know how to change.

No, it was I who would have to change to save us both. My nature was amorphous and malleable, for I had never learned what I was. I had heard of revenants walking this earth, but I resembled none. The resurgents of Hungary, of Livonia and of Wallachia, the resurgents who rose from their graves were dead. They spread disease and death, they sapped the lives of the weak, the sick and the frail. I was not one of them. I lived. I drank the strong, the healthy and the virile.

Among the Jesuits’ correspondence, I had found letters written by theologians in the East: snippets of knowledge, snippets of hearsay and of superstitions, which I attempted to piece together to understand what I was and why I was. At last, I could put a name to the “what”: _ǫpirь_.

The lands in the East abounded in stories of turmoil and mayhem caused by upirkind, of bodies of the dead, torn from their graves through spells to infest the living, of humans and livestock alike. Did we have two souls? Perhaps. Some were of the opinion that an upir was born when the midwife offered the newborn to the devil before it was baptised. Even after the child was eventually christened and the devil banished, the soul was lost, for it had come to the attention of Hell.

Whenever a plague swept the lands, graves were opened, bodies exposed, and many would be found within that were filled with blood, even if they had been wan and bloodless in their lifetime. Many clutched their own shirt between their teeth. Once their head was severed, their heart pierced, blood would surge forth from the wounds: that was a sign for the people in the East that the body was an upir who had brought great harm upon them. The devil heated their blood to revive them and to conserve their vigour.

I was not one of them, for I did not languish in my grave. I walked upon the earth as one who had been resurrected.

The devil did not resurrect, for only God could do that. The devil could only possess.

The existence of upirkind was God’s will, for everything was. It was He who had granted the devil the right to punish humans for their sins and transgressions by infesting the air, corrupting the crops and sucking out the essence of life.

A demon haunted my lover’s dreams, and a demon haunted his waking hours. For I was an instrument of divine justice, wielded to punish mortals for the _maleficium_ they had committed. I had been granted strength and wit to use them as weapons against sinners and heretics. Was I meant to use them against the pagan idol as well?

Was I here of my own free will or had I been placed in Athos’ path to haunt him?

I put the letters aside and stared into the flame of the candle, listening to rain rapping against the canvas above my head. We were all instruments of our gods. Was I less capable of making my own decisions than others because I had died? My wit was certainly sharper and quicker than that of most people. It was impossible that my thoughts should not be my own, for I guided others and was not guided by them. With the exception of Athos, whom I followed without questioning his orders or motives. (Well, perhaps I questioned them a bit, if I was perfectly honest, but only because Athos enjoyed my insubordination as much as I did.)

“I am the spirit that denies,” I whispered as I rose from my chair and glided behind the partition where Athos lay asleep. I watched him as I undressed. My clothes were still damp from when I’d got caught in the rain. The long dark hair, the proud mouth and chin, the dark lashes: silky crescents trembling against white skin. He was beautiful and I longed to be in his arms, to warm my cold fingers against the velvety heat, to feel the pulse of divine blood throb against my flesh when I wrapped myself around him. I was half-hard by the time I knelt by his side and lowered myself over him, careful not to disrupt his sleep. He sensed my presence despite my stealth. His head rolled towards me and his lips parted in a sigh. His dreams appeared to be untroubled, for once, his brow crease-free and his mouth relaxed. I brushed the ghost of a kiss across his lips, breathing in the warmth of his skin.

The heat that rose off him drew me in and enveloped me like a cocoon as I stretched myself out beside him and our bodies undulated against each other, aligning from temple to toe. When I pushed my cold face into the side of his neck, Athos half-woke and muttered something around a torpid tongue. Inside his veins, the sluggish blood of sleep woke like a stream when the ice of winter begins to melt under the spring sun. “Shh,” I murmured into his hair. “Sleep.”

Pressed against my cheekbone, his mouth curved into a smile, and he rolled his hips into me.

“You’re joking,” I huffed, brushing his hair away from his temple with my mouth to bare his skin to my kiss. “Good dream, was it?”

“Mmh…” Athos’ hips arched off the cot and into me. “The reality is better.”

Sleep lingered in his muscles, making him heavy and pliant, and I dragged my hand across his chest, under his shirt and pushed my cold fingers under his armpit. Athos gasped and nipped at my skin with his teeth. “You monster,” he muttered.

“I am that,” I conceded. I had not realised how cold my skin was; only now that I pressed up against the warmth of Athos’ body, goosebumps erupted all over my arms and neck. I shivered in his embrace and his arms tightened around me. One long-fingered hand snaked under the hem of my shirt, fingers splayed across the small of my back. I parted my lips over a stretch of skin beneath the line of his jaw. “You need a shave.”

Athos rubbed his face against mine. “Are you saying I’m scratchy?”

“Like a wild boar.”

“Poor delicate chyortik.” He pulled my hand to his lips and kissed the tips of my fingers. “Who would have thought you Slavic demons had such tender constitutions?”

My heart shuddered in my breast and I shifted to mask my sudden excitement. I had not elaborated the exact nature of my research to Athos; I merely used to smile mildly whenever he mocked my ‘demonology studies’. Was I a Slavic demon still or had I changed so much that I no longer bore any semblance to my brethren in the East?

“Turn over and I’ll show you just how tender I am,” I growled into his ear.

“What?” he laughed.

“On your side.” I lifted myself off him and motioned him to lie with his back to me. The soft downy hairs on the nape of his neck tickled my lips and I closed my mouth around the vertebra on top of his spine. The curves and planes of his body aligned themselves against mine and I rocked my hips into the swell of his arse.

“What do you wa- _Ah_!” he gasped when I pushed his linen aside and shoved my cock between his thighs, nudging his balls from behind. I was shivering still, for cold blood from my hands and feet trickled up my spine and flooded my heart. My chest and groin were burning up, St. Anthony’s fire of the soul blazed through me and I rubbed my prick into the slick heat between Athos’ legs. My hand slipped over the arch of his hip to his cock, where my fingers encountered his. I curled my hand around that of Athos and brushed my mouth against his ear.

“ _Slow._ ”

“Yeah,” he breathed, swaying his hips into me, pushing his prick into our joint hands, panting with lust – harsh desperate gasps that he sought to stifle in the pillow. I clasped my free hand over his mouth to catch his groans in my palm, and his tongue flicked out to lick between my fingers. I lapped salt off his shoulder and grazed his skin with my teeth without breaking it. “Aramis!” he groaned – the familiar breathless gasp that preceded his climax. In the next moment, my hand was wet and sticky with his seed, and his thighs clenched around my own prick. I spent myself one or two heartbeats after him, panting my release into the tangled hair in the back of his neck. Athos kissed my palm and sucked in two of my fingers, nibbling at the pads like a puppy.

I dragged my hand up his stomach, massaging his seed into his skin. “Sleep now,” I muttered into his neck. His heartbeat was slowing down thud for thud, reverberating against my ribcage. That calm when he lay in my arms, breath slow and steady and body heavy and languid: it calmed me in turn. Would his dreams trouble him when such serenity had descended over his heart and body? He had been my rock: calm, unyielding, eternal. I had to make sure that he would not become the stone around my neck.

***

**July, 1628**

“Why do you keep coming here, Monsieur?” she asked.

The ship was tossed about in a storm. Milady’s hand clutched at her stomach, but she soldiered on bravely.

“Drawn by a power not of my own making, Madame,” I told her just as a turbulent heave caused the boat to crane heavily. She stumbled, but I had caught her, my arms wrapping around her corseted waist.

“Just as I am trapped here by a power not of my own making,” she exhaled, her breath hot against the skin of my neck. “Release me from the enchantment.”

“I can’t.”

“And if you could,” her lips brushed against my jaw and I drew back.

“I would not.”

“At least you tell me the truth.” She tried to stand up, to right her attire, but the storm had other plans for us and she came tumbling into my arms again. “It appears I’m powerless to resist you,” she laughed. Her head rolled against my shoulder and her eyes fluttered close. “Do you love me, Athos?” she asked and I tried to pull away but she had clung to me with a surprising amount of strength.

“No.”

“But you still desire me.”

There was no need to deny it, she had been seated in my lap. My body’s response was plain enough and required no further elaboration.

“Then why not just take what is so graciously on offer?” Her body curved, supple and graceful like a panther, or a python about to strike and suffocate. She wrapped her arms about my neck, I felt her nails dig into my shoulder blades. “You want me. Take me.” Her breasts pressed flush against my chest, heaving in the tightly bound confines of her attire.

“I can’t.” Again, I tried to gently unseat her, but she held on like an experienced rider.

“Son of Zeus, afraid of a woman’s touch,” she whispered against my lips. “Come, husband mine. It isn’t actually touching if it’s done in a dream.”

“It feels real,” I gasped as she rolled her hips against my groin.

“It isn’t. You know it isn’t.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because. How would I know you’re the son of Zeus if I wasn’t a figment of your own mind?”

“But then, how would you know about the cardinal’s meeting place?”

“Ah, beautiful demigod, so clever. Too clever for his own good, probably.” She giggled again and ran her fingers through my hair. “But hard. _So_ hard, underneath me, Athos.” She moved her hips, grinding against my lap, where my treacherous cock swelled to its full tumescence.

I wavered above an abyss of my own desire. Torn between wanting the dream to end and to have it go on for hours. She was so breathtaking, this Milady, this devil with the face of an angel, I understood why so many men lay dead in her wake, or would line up to die for her as soon as she was released from this maritime enchantment.

“Kiss me now,” she commanded and pressed her lips against mine. It had been so long since I’d kissed a woman. The last woman I kissed was… well, not really a woman at all. Milady’s kisses did not taste of fire and war. Her lips were soft and pliant beneath mine. She had perfected the art of false surrender.

I wrapped my arms around her, lost in the scent of her perfume and her sex, the insistent pressure of her arms around me, her thighs, heating me even through the multiple layers of her skirts. The boat craned again and we tumbled to the floor, with only my hand underneath her head to break her fall. She laughed, a full-bodied laughter of impending triumph.

“You are my husband,” she said, pulling me down on top of her with one hand while the other one lifted up her skirts.

“I’m not,” I insisted, even as I buried my face in the alluring curve of her neck and tugged at the strings of her bodice to loosen it. Her own hands hastened to liberate me from my breeches.

“You have his signet ring,” she said bringing my hand up to her mouth and kissing every digit until her lips alighted on my ring finger and I found myself sporting the count’s ring again.

It was a dream. It was all a dream. They couldn’t punish me for something I did in a dream. Could they? Was it really a woman’s touch if there was no contact in the physical realm?

“And you know what the best part about our marriage is, Athos?” she asked, sucking my middle finger into her mouth and trailing her lips and teeth over its flesh.

“Tell me.”

“I will never break your heart,” she whispered, gazing deeply into my eyes.

“Fuck this nightmare!” I snapped my hips forward, into the waiting heat of her beneath me. She moaned loudly and her legs wrapped around me in an unbreakable ring.

“Such language, M. le comte, shocking…” she half-moaned again, sucking and biting my mouth as if she wanted to devour me. Her kisses no longer the kisses of surrender but the brands of possession, as I slammed her into the floorboards of her ship.

She felt so real beneath me, the way her body welcomed mine, the way heat and heady perfume rose up from her skin, the way she tasted on my tongue, a forbidden elixir, even sweeter for being so long denied. I understood why it had been so easy for everyone to lose their minds over her. She had been set upon this earth by Satan. Another explanation I could not glean. I had to wake up.

I had to wake up.

I had to wake up!

“Athos… Athos. You have to wake up.”

My eyes flew open and immediately beheld two onyx jewels hovering above my face. His brow was furrowed in consternation.

“Did I hurt you?” I gasped, sitting up in bed.

“No,” he drew his hand down my chest and I realized I had been covered in a sheen of sweat. “But I was worried you might hurt yourself based on the sounds were making.” I flushed and thanked the gods that the sun was not up yet. His hand trailed lower and stopped when he reached my cock, which I was horrified to find still hard as a rock from my dream. “What were you dreaming about that put you in such a state?”

“What do you suppose?” I evaded.

“It better have been me, or else I shall be most vexed.”

“I love you,” I suddenly uttered. I had spoken Greek, something that I had not done with him since Rhodes. I had spoken the right words, so there was no misunderstanding exactly what I meant when I said it.

“I know,” he replied in French, a look of confusion shading his own angelic features. Why did I feel so guilty? It had only been a dream.

His hand had wrapped around my cock, a warm, familiar grip.

“I love you too,” he added, also in French, “Moi aussi, je t’aime,” he had said.

His hands and his words were meant to distract me from the fact that he could no longer speak to me in the age-old language of our love. His sudden regret worked in my favor to obscure my own bewildered guilt. I was sickened to realize that I had done this intentionally because I could not bear to tell him about my dream.

“Show me,” I whispered.

His lips brushed against mine, that faint sweetness that would forever remind me of heather mead, and he quickly reached for the jar of oil, coating my throbbing cock with it liberally. Eagerly, I tugged his nightshirt over his head and reeled his naked body closer to mine. I drew his mouth towards my own, I let my soft moans mingle with our kisses, as he spread out on top of me, my luxurious hellcat.

“It’s been too long since you’ve drank from me,” I whispered as I licked a long stripe up his lithe neck. He was so gloriously different from the demon of my dreams. The demon of my waking hours. With a movement of my hips, I had managed to flip us both over, so that I could pin him beneath me and spread him open for me with my fingers. I could never trust him to do this properly himself, my beautiful, eager boy.

“We’re at war, Athos,” he whimpered as I pressed against the pleasure point inside him, his thighs trembled but remained splayed open for me, like some kind of gift from the gods.

“But I want to be inside you,” I confessed into the tight ligaments of his neck, not daring to mark him there, but digging my thumbs into the jutting grooves of his hips. He was about to make the obvious remark. “Not like this,” my throbbing, burning cock twitched against his inner thigh as I slid up to poise myself at his entrance. “Well, like this, too.”

“This is seduction most vile,” he laughed quietly against my mouth. “You offer me ambrosia _and_ to scale Mt. Athos. How can a man refuse?”

“A man should do no such thing,” I squeezed through my teeth as I slowly penetrated him. His eyelids fluttered closed, eyelashes like butterfly wings, his lips parted around a melodious sigh. Deceitful delicacies upon his face, deceitful wiles falling from his lips. Only one thing was real - our covenant. I needed to sanctify it again. I bowed my head as I slammed my hips into him.

His hands were at my nape, his breath came in rapid bursts of heat against the bulging veins in my neck. His hunger had called my blood to the surface.

“Are you sure?” he whispered, his muscles clenching around my cock with glorious intent.

“Take me,” I gasped, losing myself to the feel of his body yielding to mine. His teeth, those wonderful instruments of death, tore at my flesh at last, making my life force flow forth into his mouth that tightened around the wound in my neck. I was complete again. “Aramis,” I moaned, helplessly lost in a sea of sensation and emotion that threatened to overwhelm me.

This - this was the only thing that was real.

“Don’t move,” he had said when I lay atop him, spent and panting against his damp hair. I tried to mutter something in protest, but his arms and legs still held me prisoner. “Don’t pull out. Stay inside me.”

“But…”

“Stay.”

I muttered something incomprehensible and my spent cock gave a valiant twitch inside him at the mere thought of what he had requested.

“You’ll get hard again soon enough. And we can go again.”

My hand helplessly pawed at his face and he sucked my fingers into his mouth. I could feel my blood pumping through his veins, giving my existence meaning again. He was my anchor. With him underneath me, around me, I would not be adrift at sea again. His fingers idly toyed with my messy curls as he continued to hold me. The thought of taking him again, just like that, when he was still pliant and wet and dripping with my seed, was enough to send what blood was left in me cascading down into my loins. I growled into his skin that pulsated with my own life force and slammed my hips down and into him again.

“There. I knew it wouldn’t take long.”

I kissed his mouth again, his eyes, his nose.

“Don’t leave me,” I begged from a dark place inside me that I hated for him to see.

“Never,” he promised.


	8. Trial and Execution

**Arras, August 25, 1628**

The Gascon must have been secretly baking and burning cakes all spring and summer. I saw no other explanation for the favours with which Tyche showered him without cease - unless the Goddess of Fortune had taken him as her mortal lover, whose bushy moustache and prowess in seduction worthy of Zeus himself had impressed her so that she continued to smooth his path through life.

Even as I watched Athos sink deeper and deeper into the frozen lake of his own mind, I saw d’Artagnan thrive. More than once, I sniffed him surreptitiously, attempting to ascertain if I had perhaps been wrong after all; if he was a creature who sucked the life force of the living by attaching himself to them like a leech. But no, the Gascon smelled mortal. Had he perhaps bedevilled me? Made me believe him human when in fact he was a demon, more powerful than myself? I tested this hypothesis by bedevilling him for my part: once he got promoted from guard to musketeer, I sold him my spare uniform and made him think that it fit him, even though he was barely five feet tall whereas I shared height and stature with the duke of Buckingham. The Gascon fell victim to my hypnotic smile and my compliments without fail, and he passed all day in exhibiting his uniform in every street of the camp until Athos took pity on him and discreetly advised him to have it taken in.

Such innocent frivolities helped me amuse myself during those long months as the siege went on, uneventful and dreary. Buckingham had not yet arrived with his English reinforcements, nor had we heard any news of his campaign. Milady remained lost at sea, for we had not heard from her either. (No-one but Athos, that is, who communicated with his demon wife in his dreams. Why she had settled on tormenting him and not d’Artagnan, I could not understand. It was perhaps because Athos’ heart was so much more tender and therefore receptive for guilt-born impressions than that of the Gascon, whose soul was made of cork.)

August came, and the king, who was bored, as always, but perhaps a little more so in camp than elsewhere, resolved to go incognito and spend the festival of St. Louis at St. Germain. He asked the cardinal to order him an escort of only twenty musketeers. The cardinal, who sometimes became weary of the king, granted this leave of absence with great pleasure to his royal lieutenant, who promised to return about the fifteenth of September.

On hearing the news, d’Artagnan’s excitement spilled over. M. de Treville, who was aware how impatient the Gascon was to return to Paris, fixed him, as well as Athos, Porthos and myself, to form part of the king’s escort. D’Artagnan’s plan, such as it was, was to attain leave of absence and to go and fetch Mme Bonacieux from the convent of the Carmelites. He was readying himself to carry the mercer’s wife off as her champion and, since he presumably did not intend to remain living with her under her husband’s roof, to install her in a hôtel which he would pay for with his infinite wealth.

I therefore wrote immediately to Marie to obtain from the queen authority for Mme Bonacieux to leave the convent and to retire either into Lorraine or Belgium. Eight or ten days afterward, I received a reply from my crafty nymph, to which was added an order, conceived in these terms:

 _At the Louvre, August 10, 1628_  
_The superior of the convent of Bethune will place in the hands of the person who shall present this note to her the novice who entered the convent upon my recommendation and under my patronage._  
_Anne_

My soul swore, even though not one coarse word spilled over my lips, and my blood boiled with helpless ire. When had Mme Bonacieux been moved from Stenay, where I had known her to be those past months, to Bethune? Verily, it was the hand of Tyche, who meddled in the affairs of men with the panache of a Hellenic deity. She had thwarted my attempts to conceal Mme Bonacieux’ true whereabouts from d’Artagnan. Fate, it seemed, was determined to reunite the Gascon with his mistress of half an hour. (He would, no doubt, claim that he had kept himself chaste and pure for her in the three years of their separation.)

Bearing the fate of Kitty in mind, I made one last attempt to protect the poor deluded woman from the love with which the Gascon planned to shower her.

“We cannot let him go to Bethune on his own,” I told Athos.

“No.”

I was surprised. I had expected he would consider the love affair of the Gascon and the mercer’s wife a trifle and beneath his contempt. But then he spoke.

“Milady is in Bethune.”

“How do you know?” True, the cardinal had told Milady to wait for his orders in Bethune, but that had been nine months ago. Milady had been lost at sea ever since, and we had no way of knowing where she was now.

“I know.” Athos’ voice was infused with the icy calm of the frozen lake, and my own blood ran cold.

It was the four of us who set off, then, in hot pursuit of mistresses, demonesses and goddesses, oh my. D’Artagnan rode ahead of us, driven by Furies, closely followed by Athos, driven by Manias. Porthos’ countenance, whenever I caught a glimpse of it, wore the same expression of anxiety that mine did. We shouldn’t be here, I thought again and again. We should be in Paris, where Athos could recover in the quiet solitude of his rooms. But no, had we stayed in Paris, Tyche would have sent Milady to torment him there. He should have left her alone, that demon witch who had my godling in her thrall. He should not have gone after her in the Red Dovecot. Had I known what he planned... had I thought of stopping him... _Had d’Artagnan not raped a demon witch_ , none of this would have happened. But I knew of the vengefulness of demons; she would not let him live unless we stopped her. Too late. Alea iacta est, Fate had spoken, our path was set, and it was leading us towards an angel whom we must save and a demon whom we must destroy.

On the evening of the twenty-fifth, as we were entering Arras, a horseman came out of the post yard, started off at a gallop and with a fresh horse took the road to Paris. At the moment he passed through the gateway into the street, the wind blew open his cloak and lifted his hat, which the traveller seized with his hand the moment it had left his head, pulling it eagerly over his eyes.

D'Artagnan, who had his eyes fixed upon this man, became very pale, let his glass fall dramatically and leapt for his horse. Athos rushed after him, and Porthos and I rushed after Athos. We stopped d’Artagnan at the door.

"Well, where the devil are you going now?" Athos had grabbed the Gascon by the arm like a wayward child.

"It is he!" cried d'Artagnan, pale with anger, shaking and spitting and almost incoherent as he attempted to free himself from Athos’ grip. “It is he! Let me overtake him!"

"He? What he?" asked Athos, while Porthos tugged at his moustache and I lifted my eyes heavenward in silent prayer.

"He, that man!" informed us the Gascon.

"What man?" Athos deemed the information not quite sufficient.

The man who was already a league gone, I reckoned, and therefore irrelevant to us. But the Gascon felt the need to elaborate the man’s diabolic nature for us to recoil in horror: "That cursed man, my evil genius, whom I have always met with when threatened by some misfortune. He who accompanied that horrible woman when I met her for the first time. He whom I was seeking when I offended our Athos. He whom I saw on the very morning Madame Bonacieux was abducted. I have seen him; that is he! I recognised him when the wind blew upon his cloak."

"The devil!" said Athos, musingly, echoing my own thoughts. The stranger was a spawn of Hell, I was sure of that, for d’Artagnan had explained it to us many times. The list of his gruesome sins had also included laughing at d’Artagnan’s horse and stealing his letter of recommendation, which was in every conceivable way a much worse crime than d’Artagnan stealing the passport from de Wardes. Yes, the man with the scar was a frightful demon indeed, who, on top of everything else, was a creature of the cardinal and therefore a servant of the First Minister of France. I shuddered at the thought that God suffered a monster like that to walk the earth and bile rose in my throat even as d’Artagnan issued our commands.

"To saddle, gentlemen! to saddle! Let us pursue him, and we shall overtake him!"

"My dear friend," I said gently. "Remember that he goes in an opposite direction from that in which we are going, that he has a fresh horse and ours are fatigued, so that we shall disable our own horses without even a chance of overtaking him. Let the man go, d'Artagnan; let us save the woman." I hoped as I spoke that d’Artagnan would not realise that it was fear that held me back, for the thought of encountering that evil genius who had so easily outsmarted us all by riding in the opposite direction; the fire-breathing demon whose face was deformed by a scar - the thought terrified me to the very core of my heart and souls.

It was at that point that I knew gods were toying with us as much as demons were: for a note had dropped out of the escaping villain’s hat - a note with one word on it. Nothing but one word: the name of some town or village, written by Tyche herself. I recognised the hand.

***

**Bethune, August 25, 1628**

I recognized her hand. I had recognized it from my dream; that had not been the strange part. The strange part was that I appeared to not be dreaming. If Rochefort had been coming from seeing _her_ , if she was there, at the convent in Bethune, then the enchantment held her no longer.

What was she doing there? Ah yes, waiting for the cardinal’s orders, as she had told me.

 _Had_ she told me? I no longer knew what had been dream or reality.

I spurred my horse forth, flying behind d’Artagnan, who raced his stallion onwards like Phaeton in the chariot across the sky. I had hoped that in his haste he would neither set the Earth aflame, nor be struck down by one of my Father’s well-aimed lightning bolts.

The Carmelite convent apparated ahead of us as if unveiled by some magician’s hand. Would _she_ be waiting there for us? For me. My body trembled at the remembrance of her embrace. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel her fingernails digging into my flesh while I thrust into her. I could feel the unforgiving roughness of the planks beneath our bodies, the way her skirts had billowed out underneath me. “You are my husband,” she had said.

I felt the last shreds of my sanity slip through my hands like grains of sand.

Ahead of us, in the courtyard, stood a carriage with the cardinal’s arms upon its doors. D’Artagnan drew his weapons, and we all followed suit instinctively. Both of my pistols had been readied and I had unloaded one at the coachman, just as the carriage careened to make its escape. D’Artagnan’s shot followed closely to mine. My aim told true; wherever the carriage had galloped off, the man driving it had been at least wounded. We could always find him again, if need be.

The Gascon was already pounding at the door, brandishing the letter from the Queen like a holy relic to force his way past the convent doors. Both of my pistols still drawn, I dismounted, flanked by Porthos and Aramis, who had both drawn their swords.

“I don’t like this,” Aramis stated, entirely superfluously. “We’re entering the house of God with drawn arms.”

“Then retract your fangs and follow me,” I snapped. I had no time to debate the niceties of storming a convent with him at that precise moment. If we were to encounter _her_ inside, the arms of the entire regiment might not be enough to save us. To save _me_. Perhaps, my existence had already been forfeited. I saw the hand of Fate in all this.

The hallways of the convent were blessedly free of the cardinal’s guards, or anyone else who would oppose our advance. D’Artagnan called his beloved’s name, and from down the hall we heard an answering cry, like a mating call of the turtle dove.

“Should we go with him?” Porthos asked.

“I suppose,” Aramis shrugged. “To make sure nothing untoward happens.” His gaze fixed upon me with growing unkindness, as if this too had somehow been my fault.

Had he, really? Or was I still seeing things that were not there?

“Come, Athos,” the pommel of my beloved’s sword prompted me forward. “A lady’s honor might be at stake,” his smile teetered on the verge of friendliness. The earth tilted beneath my feet as if I was still on Milady’s ship, and I followed d’Artagnan through the door of the mercer’s wife’s cell.

We found the lovers in a tender embrace. I threw a look at Aramis, who shrugged, and I collapsed into a chair, feeling as if my duty, such as it was, with regards to the lady’s honor and d’Artagnan’s intentions had been fulfilled. My companions sheathed their swords and I had replaced my own smoking pistol in my belt. I needed a drink, and instinctively gazed about the room to see whether I could find succor from a carafe of wine somewhere.

"Oh, it was in vain she told me you would not come! I hoped in silence. I was not willing to fly. Oh, I have done well! How happy I am!" Mme. Bonacieux’s voice brought me back to my senses, and I had lept out of my seat as if burned.

“ _She_! What she?” d’Artagnan’s voice trembled.

Their conversation grew more desperate, as I feverishly continued to scan the room for clues.

"Her name, her name!" cried d'Artagnan. "My God, can you not remember her name?"

“ _Who are you?_ ” my dream came back to me. “ _Tell me your name._ ” She wouldn’t. She did not. She had called me her husband and I had taken her as if she was my wife.

“I cannot see!" A dolorous cry.

"Help, help, my friends! Her hands are icy cold," d’Artagnan’s voice called to me as if from a great distance. Before me stood a table, and on the table I beheld two empty glasses, darkened by the residue of wine. "She is ill! Great God, she is losing her senses!"

The table also held a carafe of water, for which I saw Aramis’ hand reach. He stopped and his eyes locked with mine.

"Oh!" I muttered, "oh, no, it is impossible! God would not permit such a crime!"

Aramis’ eyes widened, as if for the first time he had truly plundered the depth of my madness. I felt ill. The same nausea rose up in me as on Rhodes when I had found my Grigori dead. A harbinger of doom.

“ _The deadliest_ ”, she had said. “ _No antidote._ ”

"Madame!" I approached the poor victim of my hubris, "madame, in the name of heaven, whose empty glass is this?"

“Mine, monsieur," said d’Artagnan’s beloved, her voice weakening.

"But who poured the wine for you that was in this glass?"

"She."

"But who is _she_?" I insisted, ashamed of badgering a dying woman, yet needing to know for sure. Was I doomed? Were we all going to Hell and Tartarus?

"Oh, I remember!" said Mme. Bonacieux, "the Comtesse de Winter."

A communal cry filled the room. I was doomed. I had triggered the curse - and this woman would be the first to die. How would it happen? Would the Earth open up and swallow me next? What monster would descend or rise up to devour me? Was there still time to save anyone else?

D’Artagnan was holding onto my hands, speaking in a desperate voice. “What do you believe?” he had asked me.

“I believe everything,” I responded. I believe I am about to be destroyed. I believe very bad things, indeed. My eyes cast about for Aramis. Could I still save _him_?

Mme. Bonacieux’s face turned livid and she was seized by violent spasms, collapsing into the arms of Porthos and Aramis, while her lover abortively called for help.

"Useless!" I exclaimed, "useless! For the poison which _she_ pours there is no antidote."

Aramis’ eyes were upon mine again. Did he remember my dreams as well as I had? He couldn’t. I hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t told him about… _that_.

“You should have told me,” Aramis had chided me when we were first reunited and relocated to Languedoc. “We could have done something.”

“No, Aramis, there was nothing we could have done,” I had said to him then.

What was I supposed to do now? Before my eyes, Mme. Bonacieux expired in d’Artagnan’s arms, and he collapsed upon her lifeless corpse, as if stricken by the curse himself.

Aramis threatened heaven; I made the sign of the cross over her body. For a moment, it was as if each one of us had become the other. Did he know the gods were to blame for this? Did he know I was?

It was then that another man appeared in the doorway, grim and pale as death itself.

 _Beau-frère_ , I had remembered. Still alive, then. Still not leaving her his inheritance. His name had been on that demon’s list, beneath our own.

I roused myself from my seat and from my stupor. "Be welcome, my Lord," I spoke to him, "you are one of us."

Yes, he was one of us, but there was one more. _The headsman of Bethune._

There was still a chance to save myself, and a chance to save the rest of us. The demon had penetrated my dreams and threatened my very existence, but the gods had seen it fit to allow me to see a way out of my predicament. A way to rid me of the demon without having to do so by my own hand.

The headsman of Bethune.

“Be a man, my friend,” I spoke the words to d’Artagnan that I had heard Grimaud speak to me on numerous occasions. “Women weep for the dead; men avenge them!"

I led d’Artagnan out of the cell; we had bequeathed Constance’s body to the care of the Carmelites. The boy wept, and I did not have the heart to discourage him.

Our funereal procession departed for the town of Bethune. At the inn, I had made sure each man had his own room. I needed time to be alone, as I would imagine we all did after what had befallen us.

"But shall we not pursue that woman?" d’Artagnan asked, eyes still brimming with tears.

"Later," I replied. "I have measures to take."

"She will escape us," the boy said, his lip trembling with grief and petulance, "she will escape us, and it will be your fault, Athos."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aramis furrow his beautiful brows.

"I will be accountable for her," I promised. I had let her live once. Twice. I would not be so kind a third time.

I saw Aramis and Porthos exchange a look. They had no need to speak; they thought I had gone mad. They were not wrong. And still, there was time to save them all, if only they stayed out of my way and let me deal with this demon.

"Now, gentlemen," I spoke, handing each a key to their chamber, "let everyone retire to his own apartment. D'Artagnan needs to be alone, to weep and to sleep. I take charge of everything; be easy."

"It appears, however," said Lord Winter, "if there are any measures to take against that woman, it concerns me; she is my sister-in-law."

"And me," I said without hesitation. "She is my wife!"

***

“She is my wife!” Athos announced and Aramis and I looked at each other with great eloquence. I felt blood drain from my face and I saw Aramis’ countenance mirror mine.

I do not use this term lightly, but: _Hera’s cunt!_

With his following words, Athos, like a stern father, ordered us all to our rooms. Aramis and I exchanged another glance, and by the movement of his eyebrows, I could tell our crafty companion had already made up his mind about something, although what would remain a mystery to me for the time being.

For some time, I could hear Athos pacing in his room, which was positioned immediately above my own. I tried not to think about it too much, I would only get upset. The young lady who had died in d’Artagnan’s arms weighed heavily upon me, and I drew out the latest missive from my darling Procureuse from my doublet and ravenously reread the lines which spoke of love eternal and her husband’s deteriorating health. What had this Milady used to kill d'Artagnan's mistress, and how could I get my hands on some to send to Paris to hasten the Procurator’s passage to the Styx? Er… I mean, to the baby Jesus, hallowed be his tiny baby bottom.

Above me, Athos had stopped pacing. Did he sleep? If so, did he dream? I was convinced that he had been bewitched. Aramis seemed ready to swear that he was haunted by a demon. Athos alone must have known the truth; but if he did, he did not speak it to us.

A knock on my door had revealed Grimaud who had apparently come for Mousqueton. My homunculus sought my permission which I granted with a sigh. Athos was gathering an army of lackeys to his dark purposes, whatever they were. “She is my wife!” Ha! My dear cousin had lost it entirely.

Beyond my window pane, night fell and with it my spirits. Still, I did not feel like sleeping, curiosity keeping me awake. When my servant returned, he informed me that he was to set out at break of dawn, taking one of the four roads to Armentières, set upon locating the witch’s trail. I had no objection to this: if Athos wanted to find his witch and burn her, or drown her, or do whatever one does to witches, I would support him in this undertaking. Especially as she had apparently poisoned that pretty Constance girl. With her witchcraft. My mistress in the Languedoc would never have done such a thing, I thought wistfully, looking at Mousqueton with sincere gratitude. And then I ordered him to fetch me some dinner for sudden hunger pangs assailed me.

By the time I had finished my repast, I had noticed that the room upstairs had been unusually quiet. Then I heard the door above me slam and, simultaneously, a quiet rapping on my window. I startled, trying to pierce the night with my gaze. I was not as adept at doing this as my two friends. The rapping on the glass repeated, this time more forcefully, and with such a cadence as to convey a certain _attitude_.

“Aramis,” I opened the window, “what do you have against doors?”

He sprung into my room, his cloak billowing behind him, and suddenly I understood why Athos had always called him the flittermouse.

“I don’t know what to do,” Aramis uttered in an anguished voice.

“With a door?” I asked with growing confusion.

“No, not with a _door_ , you dolt! With Athos!”

I threw up my hands. “Do whatever you normally do with him when you two are having a spat!”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you bloody well know it!”

I sank into one of the chairs, indicating the other one with my hand. Aramis quietly locked the window and took a seat across from me. He looked pale, as if he had not fed in some time (which, come to think of it, he must not have had ample opportunity).

“I followed him tonight,” Aramis began speaking, gesturing towards the wine. Mousqueton, who was not as quick as Grimaud to read gestures, eventually figured out what was required of him and brought another glass, which Aramis quickly filled himself and drained.

“You followed… Athos?”

“He isn’t himself, you know.”

“I noticed,” I frowned. “Although I am not sure who he thinks he is.”

“He _thinks_ he is that woman’s husband! The comte de La Fère.”

“She has bewitched him,” I insisted. “It’s the only possible explanation.”

“I wish that I could agree with you on that account.” Aramis refilled his glass. I was not accustomed to watching him drink so much… wine. “A part of me is afraid he has bewitched himself.”

“He’s clearly deteriorating.”

“He went to a house on the edge of town. A lonely house, with windows filled with stuffed foal and human skulls.”

“A witch’s house?”

“So I thought,” Aramis took a long gulp, his eyes fixed on a far away spot. “I could not follow him in. But I stopped a farmer along the way, pointed the house out to him, and asked him who lived there.” He paused. “Care to venture a guess?”

I hated when he did this. “Um… Not a witch?”

“The town’s headsman!”

“You mean…,” I needed wine too. “An executioner? Why would Athos go to see an executioner -- _Oh._ ”

“He’s going hunting,” Aramis drank.

“I thought we did not kill women.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Aramis repeated. I chewed on my mustache.

“We have to go along with it,” I stated more firmly than I felt. “You want Athos restored, don’t you?” Aramis nodded slowly, but his eyes still looked anguished. “So, we find this witch, and we have the headsman do his thing - behead her. Demons and witches both die that way, right? Right?”

“I don’t actually know..,” Aramis looked confused and his hand flew to his own neck as if the shadow of the executioner’s blade had gone through it. “And, besides, we do not know for sure that she is a demon. Or a witch.”

“Of course she is!” I maintained. “Look at what she’s done to your lover! And then she killed that nice Mme. Bonacieux.” I made a point to cross myself, for his benefit. He seemed to find such comfort in his Jesus.

“How do we know that? All we know is that Constance died!”

“Well, we didn’t kill her. Then who did?”

“Suppose she did kill Constance. Even so, is it our place to punish her? We who have killed men for sport!”

“That woman has tried to have d’Artagnan assassinated twice!” I tried protesting. “And now she killed his mistress. D’Artagnan is our friend.”

“He _raped_ her!” With that, Aramis clasped his own hand over his mouth. Our conversation had gotten too heated as both of us could see. He continued in a heated whisper. “He had grossly violated her, Porthos! If I knew how to kill goddesses, and Eris was before me right now, I would not hesitate to murder her myself for what she had done to Athos: goddess, woman, or not! But if this Milady is neither goddess nor demon, then we have no jurisdiction over her misdeeds, such as they are!”

“And yet,” I placed my hand over his, pressing it tightly. “She _has_ bewitched Athos. And she _must_ die.”

Aramis had left through my door, not through the window. Even though he did not explicitly agree with my rationale, I knew that his love for Athos would eventually win over his lingering doubts. In this, as in all things, he would follow Athos’ lead. As would we all.

At noon the following day Mme. Bonacieux was laid to rest at the Carmelite convent. Athos had disappeared again. Aramis looked gloomy and wan. D’Artagnan wore the face of desperation.

Upon our return to the inn, d’Artagnan had again approached my cousin, who had appeared shrouded in a steely coldness, the kind that frightened me.

“What is to be done?” d’Artagnan asked.

“To wait!” Athos replied.

Aramis sank his nails into the palms of his hands and retreated to his own rooms. I thought about following him, but something in my heart set me against it. Whatever happened next, he had to be in agreement with it of his own accord. He needed to make his peace. I prayed that Athos would not lead us and himself unto perdition. My prayers were directed to Helios.

Unfortunately, the sun was down when next we set out.

***

It was a stormy and dark night; vast clouds covered the heavens, concealing the stars; the moon would not rise till midnight. Occasionally, by the light of a flash of lightning which gleamed along the horizon, the road stretched itself before us, white and solitary; the flash extinct, all remained in darkness.

Athos and d’Artagnan rode in advance of our little troop, Athos’ hand on the Gascon’s arm – to restrain or to steady him, I could not tell. A tall man in a red cloak rode in our midst. His pale horse gleamed in darkness. The masked horseman never spoke a word. Were it not for the fact that Lord de Winter and Porthos saw him too, I would have taken him for an apparition rendered corporeal by my heightened senses. My fangs tingled when I caught a glimpse of the folds of his red cloak that cascaded down around him and his horse like the folded wings of an Archangel, concealing his flaming sword.

The storm increased, the flashes succeeded one another more rapidly, the thunder began to growl, and the wind, the precursor of a hurricane, whistled in our plumes and hair. From amidst the torrent of rain, Grimaud slunk into our path – a silent sentinel who became our Vergil on the path spiralling deeper and deeper into the circles of Hell.

 _She_ was waiting for us: a solitary flame guided us towards the window behind which the demon witch sat. A solitary house by the bank of the river; behind it loomed the black wall of the forest. Our lackeys scurried out of their hiding spots like rats. The tall man in the red cloak sat motionless on his pale horse; flashes of lightning reflected in his wet mask – the smooth visage of an automaton or a doll. A skull.

Athos and d’Artagnan crept towards the house. They crept towards the window and the door; inside, the demon witch was waiting. Lord de Winter, Porthos, and myself, even our servants, we all had drawn our weapons. The masked man didn’t stir. Our horses stood still and breathless.

And then – a face behind the windowpane. A white face above a black cloak that spread like the wings of Discordia as she emitted a piercing cry. She had spotted Athos outside the window and her face contorted in terror. It was a beautiful face: the face of an angel animated by the passions of a human. In the brief moment that I saw it, I understood why d’Artagnan had been pursuing that woman and why Athos was haunted by her in his dreams. My blood stirred and I wished that I had met her first. I would not have fallen victim to a demon witch from Hell.

She had flung herself at the door as Athos came crashing in through the window. D’Artagnan towered in her path: pale and menacing, his pistol levelled at her breast. His blood urged him to slay her like it had urged him to violate her. Had it not been for Athos, who floated on the icy lake of calm, she would have lain dead by d’Artagnan’s feet.

We entered the house: Lord de Winter, Porthos, and I. The masked man in the red cloak. We arranged ourselves around the woman, whose white face had frozen into a mask of terror. Grimaud, Bazin, Mousqueton, Planchet, their weapons drawn and ready, guarded the door and window. The lamp flickered, shadows danced over the slivers of our faces visible from beneath the brims of our hats, which we had pulled over our eyes. Her face was on full display, lily-white above the black cloak.

We held trial. For without a trial, it would have been an assassination unworthy of us as gentlemen. We accused her of poisoning Constance Bonacieux with a substance to which we knew there was no antidote, for Athos had dreamed of it; and we bore witness to it. We accused her of attempting to poison d’Artagnan; and we bore witness to it. D’Artagnan accused her of urging him to kill the Baron de Wardes, whom he had attacked and stolen from and whom he had left to die; and he bore witness to it. Lord de Winter accused her of causing the Duke of Buckingham to be assassinated, and a shudder crept through us, for the commander of the enemy army was dead. Felled by a knife rather than a bullet; felled just as he was about to set off on the campaign to La Rochelle, where any one of us would have gladly struck him down on the battlefield. Felled by the hand of a bedevilled victim of the demon witch, rather than by the sword of a cool-headed gentleman.

Lord de Winter accused her once again: he accused her of having poisoned his brother, her husband. Then, as if the crime had not been hideous enough, she had pretended to be the surviving brother’s loving sister-in-law, whom de Winter had showered with kindness those past half a dozen of years, unaware that he was dealing with a demonic murderess. Fortunately, he had suddenly remembered that his brother had died in mysterious circumstances. We could not bear witness to it, for none of us had seen the crime being committed, but we did not doubt the word of a gentleman.

Oh, but the worst was still to come. For Athos accused her of being a branded thief whose beauty had tricked the comte de la Fère into marrying her. That roused her spirits at last. She, who had not spoken one word since the trial had commenced and she had found herself surrounded by her six judges, now demanded the tribunal to be found who had executed that sentence against her.

The tall man in the red cloak stepped forward. Behind the glistening mask, a hollow voice reverberated. It spoke of gruesome crimes; it spoke of a young nun, barely sixteen years old, and of her beauty. It spoke of a demon concealed beneath the face of an angel, for the girl-nun used the full armoury of seductive wiles at her disposal to lead an innocent, trustful priest, whose heart and soul were those of a saint, into temptation. She forced him to take her, she forced him to steal, she forced him to go on the run with her, and they were caught and branded. She had forced the masked man in the red cloak to brand his own brother: for he was the executioner and his brother was the innocent priest. She reunited with the priest after his release from prison and they went on to live in a quiet way, he as a curate, she as his sister. That was where the Comte de la Fère lay eyes on her and, driven by desire for her on account of her beauty, made her his wife.

She had ruined men wherever she went, that demon witch whose heart was a cauldron of pitch and tar and whose soul was a black void. When Athos asked which penalty we demanded, we spoke with one voice, for there was only one answer: “The penalty of death! The penalty of death! The penalty of death!” our words rang through the chamber and showered down on the woman who knelt in our midst. Upon hearing her sentence, she shrieked and dragged herself on her knees towards her judges, begging for mercy. My lips parted and my nostrils flared as I attempted to catch a whiff of her scent, which would tell me if she were demon or human. But it was impossible to tell, for the scent of her judges lay like a heavy mantle over the delicate fragrance of her own skin and perfume. I smelled fury and horror; I smelled rage and thirst for revenge; I smelled virility and power, the red-hot lust that made men’s blood boil on the battlefield and that became ambrosia in my mouth. The wrath and lust of ten men had saturated the chamber like a thick cloud of smoke; there was no room for the fear of the woman.

The sentence was pronounced; the storm had settled. Witching hour had not quite struck when we escaped the oppressive air of the cottage, leaving behind the broken wing of a shattered window and a lamp from which black smoke trailed into the air. Athos led our procession; behind him, two lackeys dragged Milady between them, holding her by her arms. The executioner walked behind them, and Lord de Winter, d'Artagnan, Porthos, and I walked behind the executioner. Planchet and Bazin came last. Behind us loomed the skeletal profiles of the belfry and the dwellings of the town of Armentieres. In front of us, the Lys rolled its waters like a river of molten tin. We walked into the blackness of the forest like knights errant riding into battle against an army of giants and dwarves. In the roots I heard goblins giggle, in the treetops I heard an owl’s monotonous cry. The Thunderous Father flung serpentine lightning across the skies above the horizon which cleaved heavens and waters like heathen scimitars. The world lay becalmed, no wind stirred, Marie’s kin kept themselves apart.

The woman’s mouth had been mute while she was being dragged towards the river. But once she had sunk upon the bank, she uttered a savage cry that was not that of a human. It pierced us like steel, and d’Artagnan, whose heart was youngest and the most impressionable, begged for her life to be spared. But Athos, whom the demon witch had been persecuting for months and whose tender heart had suffered much torment, placed himself in his way, ready to draw his sword against the Gascon.

They pardoned her, the men against whose innocent, tender and noble hearts she had committed her manifold crimes. The executioner bound her and placed her in a boat, for she was to cross to the other side of the Lys to die. Athos handed him several silver coins, which the red-cloaked Charon threw into the river. The boat moved off towards the left-hand shore. Watching the guilty woman disappear across the Styx, we dropped to our knees. A moonbeam fell upon the blade of a large sword, the blade came down with a sickening thud, the blond hair tumbled in a tangled mess in the grass. The odour of blood surged through the clear night air and hit my nostrils: a woman’s blood, a human’s blood, saturated with a mortal’s blood-curdling terror.

The executioner spread his red cloak on the ground, laid the body in it, picked up the head, shook out blades of grass from the hair and tossed it in after the body; he wrapped a neat bundle and threw it into the boat. In the middle of the stream he stopped the boat, and suspending his burden over the water cried in a loud voice: “Let the justice of God be done!” He let the corpse drop into the depths of the river, which closed over it, sucking her into the abyss of her unhallowed grave.

We had slain the demon witch and God’s will had been done. To this I bear witness.


	9. A Classical Tragedy

**August 28, 1628**

I was on the damned dream ship again. My stomach lurched. I did not get seasick, yet I felt inexplicably nauseated. My eyes felt heavy, as if the dream itself weighed ponderously upon me.

A mane of blond curls came into focus before my eyes, then two piercing blue eyes, and a dazzling smile. 

“You!” I growled and tried to lunge forward, only to find myself bound to the mainmast. “What are you?”

“I am a demon set upon your path to torment you,” she smiled, her fingers gently tracing down my neck and over my collarbones. “Also, I am your wife. Don’t you remember, lover? Don’t you remember at all?” Her lips brushed against mine and I pulled away, slamming my head on the mast behind me.

“I killed you,” I gasped. “You were human. You’ve always been human.” My mouth tasted of metal, as if it was full of blood.

“Have I, lover?” She took a step back, her nails still scraping against my chest as she did so. Her eyes held the same preternatural glow that had always haunted my dreams. “Are you sure about that?”

Like one of my Father’s lightning bolts rending through my brain, a thought came to me. A terrible thought.

“Tell. Me. _Your name_!” I shouted at her, straining against my bonds. “Who are you, damn it! You are not _her_. You have never been _her_ , have you?”

“I am _your wife_ ,” she repeated and began to laugh. It was not a cruel laugh. It was the laughter of a child playing her favorite game.

“Eris, _damn it_!” 

She shook her head as if loosening the fibers of her own enchantment. Her disguise fell off, along with Milady’s corseted clothes. She stood before me again, not naked as when I last saw her, but resplendent in her armor. Her long, black hair beat about in the wind like a silken cape. Her wings were spread in triumph.

I kicked out against the mast, tearing at the ropes the bound me, and lunged myself at her. I grabbed her wings as she tried to turn away, preparing to flee, but she couldn’t take to the air with my grip full of her feathers. I pulled her towards me and wrapped my hands around her long, serpentine throat.

“What are you doing, Athos?” she hissed at me as her own hands battled against mine, her neck cords strained against my fingers. She was strong. She was a goddess. “Mother was right. No good can come to women by you going near them!” She laughed again and I slammed her into the planks of the deck.

“A woman _died_!” I shouted into her face.

“Yes!” she kept on laughing. “Because you killed her, Athos, you killed her!”

I was unarmed, but I grabbed for the sword that hung at her own hips, tearing it from her scabbard.

“You wouldn’t dare!” she squealed underneath me, unseating me with a hard kick of her knee.

“Watch me!” I brought the sword downward with one powerful stab and pinned her to the deck of the ship through her stomach, knowing that it wouldn’t kill her. Nothing could. But I wanted to hurt her, to give her a small taste of what it had been like to be me. 

She lay there like a butterfly pinned to the naturalist’s board. Her cry was more of outrage than pain. “How dare you! You bastard! No, but you really are… This,” she gasped. “This is… Undignified!”

“See how you like being torn apart and put back together again,” I spat in her direction, staggering backwards as I watched her pull the sword free, blade dripping with her divine essence. She rose to her feet slowly, blood still trickling from the gaping wound which had already begun to close before my very eyes. So much for causing her any lasting damage.

“Yes, you killed her,” she smiled at me again, her favorite game resumed. Her favorite game of ruining me. “And you will kill him too, you know. Your revenant. You don’t think that you can keep him forever, do you? Your Wallachian demon?”

“Shut your mouth,” I hissed, ready to rush her again, ready to shove my entire fist through the lingering hole in her body if that’s what it took to silence her. 

As if reading my intentions, she took to the air and landed on top of one of the mast sails, looking down on me. A shower of black feathers trailed in her wake.

“You’re very angry at me, brother, but think,” she said, still smiling. “You should be grateful. I helped rid you of a dangerous enemy. A woman who, had you continued to trifle with her, could have exposed you for what you really are. And besides, the curse wasn’t triggered again. Mother doesn’t know whom you fuck inside your head. You naughty half-breed.” She giggled again, her body shaking loose more stray feathers.

“So… everything that’s happened… that was?”

“Bad luck, darling.”

“That wasn’t bad luck,” I groaned. “It was Olympian games. You played me!”

“Like the lute, lover. But can you blame me? You _are_ a beautiful instrument.” 

“Will you never leave me alone?” I asked, feeling almost resigned as my rage seeped slowly from my body. It had felt good to run her through with that sword. It had always felt good, running her through. _Damn_ her. “Find someone else to torment, Eris!”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she grinned, her teeth and her armor both reflected the pale dreamscape sunlight.

“What?”

“Kill Aramis. I’ll never bother you again.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Never.”

“I figured you’d say that.” She rose into the air, the silken cape of her hair billowing behind her in the wind. “Let me know if you change your mind!”

“Never!” I shouted into the winds, but the winds too had betrayed me, as a gust stronger than myself picked me up and threw me overboard, into the black waves below.

***

By 1628, most witches of France had been put to death. Some, like Porthos’ merry widow in the Languedoc, had survived the great purge, which was sweeping across other countries of Europe even as it ebbed off in France. The Affair of the Poisons, which would claim lives in the late 17th century, sparked a late, trifling witchhunt, and La Voisin was burnt at the stake. But for the most part, France was a safe place for people like me to live and thrive. We were entering the Age of Reason. The philosophies of Enlightenment spread through the salons of Paris like pox through its brothels. We were given to atheism, science, analysis and scepticism.

I had shed my skin several times, assuming new identities and soaking up new ideas as I lived on. I had learned to question the teachings of the tutors of my youth and I had evolved: from a Wallachian monk to a demonic warmonger to a knight of the Cross to an honnête homme. It was a cruel (not surprising, considering its Achaean origins) joke of Fate that it was in my most recent and most refined incarnation that I had killed a woman.

Three days after the midnight execution, we presented ourselves to M. de Treville, who expressed his hope that we had been well amused during our excursions.

“Prodigiously,” Athos replied and inside me a light flickered and died.

Ever since that day when he had found me praying in the chapel of Snagov, Athos' presence had lit the flame in the tabernacle of my soul. Even during those years when he was dead – not dead; even during those decades when I didn’t think of him, I had kept the eternal flame alight. It had been the beacon that guided me to him and that illuminated my path to becoming a better man. All of a sudden, I felt myself bereft of the divine light and I dropped headfirst into a tunnel whose walls closed rapidly around me. For a moment, I didn’t see anything but blackness. I blinked and my vision returned, but the world was grey and cold. The light was gone. I didn’t feel Athos' presence any longer, even though he stood right next to me.

I shivered, bereaved of light and warmth. That night, I climbed into Athos’ bedroom through the window. The monster that had clawed out of the grave slithered into the chamber on talons and wings. Athos was doused in darkness. Sprawled in his easy chair in his linen, his shirt unbuttoned, he awaited me, glass in hand. Perhaps he awaited death, I could not tell, for he didn’t speak. I had seen him drunk more times than I cared to remember. Never before had I seen him extinguished by drink like that. Grimaud should be here, tending to his master, and I was about to call him and to slap him on behalf of Athos. But suddenly, Athos’ hand around my wrist, the icy-fingered grip of the drowning man, and I understood. I pulled him up, heaved him into bed and stretched out by his side. I hadn’t bothered taking off my clothes, for they made no difference tonight. He would not touch me. He could not touch me. As I lay beside him, I willed my senses to feel him. I closed my eyes and searched for the silver thread that bound me to him, but I found none. All I saw was the white face of the woman we had slain; the fair-hair Medusa’s head rolling in the dirt. Her blood was on my hands and his. When my bare skin brushed against his, all I felt was its sticky grip, as if the witch’s fingers had reached for us from her watery grave.

She had been a witch, for she had put a spell on Athos that had clouded his heart and soul. I could barely see _him_ through the fog of the enchantment that had dulled the divine light. Even as I lay next to him, I didn’t feel his heartbeat. I didn’t feel the heat of his blood as it pulsed beneath the cold, clammy skin of a drowned man. He was extinguished as to the whole of the luminous portion of him, and his brilliant side disappeared as into profound darkness. The demigod had vanished; he remained scarcely a man.

“The witch is dead,” I said into the darkness. I turned my head to look at him and looked away quickly. “The spell must have lifted.” The dreams must have stopped. For unlike my nightmares of my own grave, his dream visions had not been of his own mind’s making.

Athos’ neck was twisted away from me, and for a moment I had the vision of it being severed from his body, but then I blinked and the mirage was gone. His eye was dull, his speech slow and painful when he shared the secret that in my heart I already knew.

“She was no witch.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, as if it was sight rather than sound that I needed to block out.

Suddenly, Homeric laughter tore from Athos’ throat. _Infinite arose / the laugh of heav’n,_ the laughter of the gods as they beheld Aphrodite ensnared in the net of her husband’s making, together with her lover, the God of War. Oh, but it was not the husband who had confined his wife this time. It was the adherent of Ares who had fallen into the trap.

“It was Eris, Aramis,” Athos choked out, breathless and giddy. “It has been Eris all along.” He twisted on the bed, flipping on his side so that he could watch me as he rammed words like daggers into me. “You wanted me to tell you, oh chyortik mine, last time she came to me.” He reached out and brushed a tendril of hair from my brow. “I am telling you now. It was Eris whose enchantment carried me away night after night. My sister, Aramis. You have always said I am as degenerate as the rest of my family. You will be happy to hear that you’ve been right.”

He leaned over me and kissed me on the mouth, hard, parting my lips with his teeth. I tasted the bitterness of wine and the sweetness of dead horse arum on his breath. But it was I who lay there as if dead, straining my senses to pick up _him_ again. His blood, I could still feel, for I could feel the blood of men. But it did not call out to me in its irresistible divine glory. I did not crave the taste of his skin; I did not crave the taste of the divine nectar.

Something had died within him, and it had rendered him a mortal.

***

**La Rochelle, September 1628**

As days shortened and autumn winds blew dry, yellowing leaves upon our path, the King and our twenty man escort made its way back to La Rochelle. The four of us traveled together, side by side, our eyes grim, and our heads bowed in contemplation of the path we’ve come from and where we were going. Now and then, I’d catch Athos out of the corner of my eye. He’d raise his broad brow, his eyes would flash, and a bitter smile passed over his lips, before descending back into what Aramis had called the icy lake of his ruminations. Aramis rode to the other side of me; they neither looked at each other nor spoke. When we had arrived in camp, each one of us had our servants pitch our own tent.

Amidst this gloom, a letter awaited me. A glorious, magnificent letter, written on the Procurator’s official stationery. It spoke of a demise that could not have been more timely and of riches so wild as to make my pirate days seem like mere dabblings in acquisition. I stood, by marriage to my dulcet darling, to inherit the coffer which dearly departed M. de Coquenard had presided over like an avaricious dragon. My heart soared with something that was close enough to love. I would have asked Athos, but I knew better than to speak to him of such things in his current state.

Something terrible seemed to loom over us, like Damocles’ sword. At any moment, we waited for it to fall, for surely we could not get away with what we had done in Armantières. Meanwhile, we escorted the King, who got it into his head to hawk for magpies in the middle of the siege. I was subsequently surprised to learn that “hawking for magpies” was not, in fact, a euphemism for skirt-chasing, as I had deluded myself into thinking, which made the entire situation even more incomprehensible. 

Rather than follow the hunt, we had stopped off in a tavern on the main road. As we sat there, in the uncomfortable silence that pervaded all our interactions of late, a gentleman had poked his head into the room and jovially hollered at d’Artagnan. By the way the Gascon responded to his greeting, with such unrestrained joy, one would have thought they’d been the oldest of friends. Imagine my shock then when we learned that the man in question was the same fabled nemesis who had so offended him in Meung, this demon who had persecuted and tormented him in Paris, and who had inadvertently led us to Milady on the road in Arras. This mighty foe introduced himself as chevalier de Rochefort, the cardinal’s equerry, and he had orders to place d’Artagnan under arrest and to bring the Gascon to His Eminence.

Athos, who had never abandoned his habit of protecting d’Artagnan from ill, had volunteered us to serve in the stead of the guards to escort d’Artagnan back to the cardinal in La Rochelle, a proposal that the surprisingly dashing chevalier de Rochefort gladly accepted upon the surrender of d’Artagnan’s sword and collection of all our words of honor, such as they were in light of recent events. Rochefort also seemed perfectly charmed when Athos told him of Milady’s death, so charmed it seemed, that he had decided to ride back to camp in our company.

I fell back with Aramis on our return journey to camp, unable to restrain my comments any longer.

“ _That_ is his Man from Meung?” I asked, as quietly as I could, given that Rochefort was still in our midst.

“The devil himself, isn’t he?” Aramis smirked, but there was no underlying bite there. Normally, he would have taken every opportunity of raillery; whatever icy lake had drowned Athos had appeared to have taken Aramis with him.

At this point, I felt that Athos - what was left of him - had been forfeit, but I made one more attempt to lift Aramis’ spirits. “Arrested by the dashing chevalier de Rochefort,” I twirled my mustache. “Athos must be dying of jealousy. Whatever happens to the boy, I expect he will demand to be detained himself.”

“Let him,” Aramis replied with profound exhaustion.

I cast a long look at him and shook my head. “I’m getting married, Aramis,” I said, testing to see if he was actually still present on this plane of existence at all.

“I am glad for you,” he replied. His smile seemed genuine enough but it did not quite reach his eyes. “You deserve happiness, my friend. And human life is so fleeting.”

The following day, once d’Artagnan came out of his audience with his His Eminence not only no longer under arrest but in favor, I had begun making preparations in earnest for my impending nuptials. There was so much to do. The sum of eight hundred thousand livres awaited me, talk about having to lay out your inheritance. I started with my wedding costume, which would have to be the very height of style and opulence (which in those days were one and same).

My friends were immortal and I could always rejoin them later, once my love had run nature’s unyielding course to its logical conclusion, i.e. my wife’s grave.

D’Artagnan spoke to me at length of his interview with M. le cardinal, this evil genius against whom all the Gascon’s faculties had been aligned since his arrival in Paris. It would appear that the evil cardinal had evilly given him a lieutenancy in the King’s musketeers. It was this lieutenancy brevet which our young Gascon produced from his pocket and offered to me with the following, touching words: “Here, my dear, write your name on it, and be a good leader for me.”

I had correctly presumed he had already offered it to Athos, who had refused. And I also correctly presumed that he would offer it to Aramis next, despite their antipathy, and who would also refuse. What did it mean for my two friends? For I was getting out, while if they stayed, they would both soon have to report to the Gascon. No, it was inconceivable that they should stay.

I made my excuses, needing no better one than the truth: I was getting married. As soon as our campaign was over and an appropriate amount of time was spent by my future Madame Porthos mourning her dearly departed. If only these Rochellais would hurry up and starve to death! 

Sadly, they held out several more months and we were unable to return from campaign to Paris until December. It was then that d’Artagnan had assumed his command and I quickly handed in my resignation. As for Aramis, he already had one foot in the Church. And Athos, well, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he had one foot in the grave.


	10. Gods' Justice

**Paris, June 1629**

 

Aramis came to me on one of those nights when the early summer heat leaves the air pregnant with anticipation: there would be a thunderstorm later, but I would sleep through it. It was the night after Porthos’ wedding, but the happy couple would not leave Paris for another fortnight, as preparations needed to be made. I held a glass of wine in my hand, but he pried it from my fingers and pushed it away. I frowned at him petulantly, but he brushed the pads of his thumbs along the furrows of my forehead, smoothing the frown away, and then he kissed my eyelids.

I melted at his touch, like I always did. I didn’t want to meet his eyes, afraid of what I might see there again: doubt, disappointment, helplessness. He had followed me and I had led him astray. He had loved me but it hadn't been enough. He still had to stand there and watch me drown in an ocean of my own making.

But he didn’t come to me to fight. Not that night. He carried with him the peace offering of his body, and I reached out for it as if it was my liferaft.

We did not speak, but then in those days to speak was a risk, nor did we need words to say what was in our hearts. His hands guided me surely as he splayed me out on my own bed and raked his fingers and eyes over me, over every curve of me, the way he did on that first night back in the Loire Valley, when we had taken the night to relearn the outlines of each other’s bodies. His lips followed his hands and I felt myself burning up under all that concentration, all that intent that seared me to the core as his mouth and tongue pressed hungry kisses into my waiting flesh. He was gentle, slow, methodical in his explorations. His hands pushed gingerly at the insides of my thighs and I parted them for him, to feel the ghosting of his hot breath against the sensitive skin, the touch of his unshaven cheek against the tightly pulled skin of my groin, the scrape of his nails along the backs of my hips. His lips again followed the path of his fingers, leaving a trail of blazing kisses in their wake that made my body sing and my blood call out to him.

“You are so beautiful, my godling,” he whispered, from his position between my spread thighs, “No wonder the gods who made you fight over you so jealously.”

“It’s you they’re jealous of,” I replied.

“Because you’re mine,” he said, his voice full of infinite sadness. I almost wept at the sound of it. Instead, I reached out for him to pull him up, so I could press my entire body up against his and feel the weight of him settle over me. I felt grounded in my surrender.

He hovered over me, my angel, and then he bent his head to take my lips with his. I moaned into his kisses, wanting more, wanting him to obliterate everything intervening that had no place between us. His hand pressed against my inner thigh again.

“Open for me,” he whispered, and I obeyed, all my blood rushing to my cock in anticipation of him taking me.

We were face to face when he first took me, the sweat off his brow trickling onto the tip of my tongue, while I panted like a bitch in heat at the feel of him inside me. The drag of his cock, powerful, long strokes, taking me apart with each thrust. I ached for him; I needed him in every pore of my body. I made my mind stand still, all thought or reason unwelcome in those moments. My whole being became concentrated on that part where our bodies connected. I burned.

He pulled out and flipped me over, and, like a ragdoll, I allowed him to manhandle me, spreading my thighs for him again and arching my back in a way that left no second thoughts about my desires. And then, he was inside me again, completing me. I felt his fangs position themselves along my jugular and threw my head back in anticipated ecstasy. His hands were everywhere and nowhere, splayed against my chest, holding onto the space between my ribs, pressing into my hip bones, pulling on my hair. He held me to him as he fucked and feasted on me and I was _his_.

Did he love me still? Did he forgive me my transgressions with this communion?

My heart beat like a wild bird inside my chest, reverberating through my whole body, deafening me with its persistent drum. A moan torn from his flutelike throat told me he had reached completion. He could’ve made me come apart without touching my cock then, but he seemed in a generous mood, and his fist wrapped around me as the last heaves of his orgasm vibrated through my body. I called out his name, my perpetual prayer, and collapsed in his arms.

He was wrapped around me still, his fingers entwined with mine, his lips pressed right behind my earlobe once his tongue dragged across my neck, healing any traces of puncture wounds. I could feel my blood pumping through his veins now, like a lullaby that his body sang to me. I turned my head, wanting to say something, but my tongue froze inside my mouth. His forehead pressed against mine and his lips parted for me again. I tasted my own blood and a hint of asphodel in his kiss. I did not know why.

“You should go,” I muttered reluctantly.

“After you fall asleep,” he said, nuzzling into the back of my neck. “I will go then. I promise.”

“Aramis…” I did not deserve the comfort of his arms. I did not deserve his forgiveness. But I craved it, I still craved all of it.

“Yes?”

“Good night,” I said, feeling sluggish and tongue-tied.

“Good night, my love.”

When I woke up the next morning, he was not there, just as he had promised.

***

There was nothing to warn me of the fact that he was gone. The sky was the same summer shade of cobalt blue, the linden trees gave off their same heady aroma, and the streets of Paris resounded with the sounds of bells and horse hooves as ever before. I had grown so inured to his threats of returning to the Church’s bosom, that I paid no more heed to them than I would have to a mosquito buzzing softly above my ear as I tried to sleep.

Inured. Fatigued. Exhausted. In truth, I had spent more time with my bottles, chasing away my nightmares, than I had with him in the last few months, or so it at times felt. Centuries conflated into an hour. With each swallow of wine, slipping further and further away from me. When did I begin to lose him? Was it when he met Marie? Was it the day d’Artagnan wandering into our path and I had thought to bring him home, like a stray puppy? Or was it a long time ago, on Rhodes, when I had inadvertently taken Eris to my bed again?

I did not know that he was gone, yet he must have been gone for days. I should have felt the absence of him. Instead I felt only the bone-deep apathy that had beset me.

It was the newly-wed Porthos who told me, as Grimaud looked on from his corner, eternal and silent as the night. I felt my Grigori’s eyes on me even as my old friend spoke. Grimaud had known. He had known and he hadn’t told me.

 _Traitor_ , I conveyed to him with the movement of my eye.

But the Watchers do not judge. They only watch. And wait until the time they’re needed.

“He’s gone,” Porthos had said. “No one knows where he’s got off to.” The way he had added that, almost too quickly, gave up his game.

“You shouldn’t lie to me. Not about this. Not after everything.” I had risen up and moved to stand by the window, yet the air of Paris suddenly suffocated me.

So, this was how he had said goodbye. I had given myself to him, trusting him to keep me safe, trusting him with my heart, with my life. And this was how he left me.

“He’ll be back, though. He can’t stay away from you forever.”

 _Forever_. Suddenly the idea of forever without Aramis felt exactly as long as it was meant to be. We had fought. Certainly we have had enough of each other. More than any mortal could have stood. But to live out the rest of my eternal life, without him, forever… I faltered.

“Did he go off with that Ondine?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Porthos replied.

“Please, stop lying to me.”

“Athos, I can’t tell you.”

“Why? You think I’m going to follow him if you tell me?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

But that wasn’t what he had been afraid of. I had all of eternity to seek him out, if I had wanted to, time was on my side. He could only run so far - his boundaries were circumscribed by the physical realm. And even if the Rohan nymph had dragged him to the bottom of the sea with her, well, I had means of reaching him down there as well. But no, Porthos wasn’t afraid of me following Aramis only to follow him.

“You think I’m going to kill him,” I said.

“Kill him?” Porthos produced a good semblance of disbelief. “Bah! You wouldn’t kill him!” His dark eyes fixated upon me. “Would you?”

“I could. Take my sword. And sink it into that skull of his.” I pictured it and the image came easily, too easily to me. “And bury him with it somewhere where no one would ever find him and dig him up again.”

“Stop that.”

“He would not mind that, I suppose. It would have been worse for him to be buried without it.” I remembered - the death dreams. No, I would put him to sleep properly, he would not dream, he would not know that he was dead. He would be gone from this world just as he was gone from my life. Right that instant.

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I want to. I want to kill him,” I insisted. “You’re right not to tell me where he’s gone.”

“You still love him, or else you wouldn’t talk that way!” my friend exclaimed.

My eyes traveled back to Grimaud, who stayed still as if imbued by a preternatural force that held him in a perpetual state of a coiled spring, always at the ready to be sprung.

“He is a monster, you know,” I said, afraid to meet Porthos’ eyes, afraid to see what I knew would be written all over his kind and faithful face: pity.

“He loves you too,” he muttered, taking a step towards me. I saw him reach out an uncertain hand and it hovered just above my shoulder.

“You believe that?” I asked, finally meeting his eyes.

“I do.”

“I don’t,” I snapped.

“Athos…”

“He’s gone. He left us. He left _me_.” I took one last look out the window and moved away, my eyes scanning the room where for so many years I had lived the life of someone else. “It’s over,” I said. “Please, leave me.”

Porthos sighed and I felt the hot and heavy weight of his hand against my upper back. For a moment, it felt as if he was pushing me into Tartarus, where his Titan ancestors still slept. And then he too was gone.

“Draw the shutters, Grimaud,” I said. “We’re leaving Paris.”

***

Centuries ago, he had left his scent on me and I had found him in Snagov. I would find him again. I would find him and I would put him to eternal sleep. I understood everything now. I understood Olivier when he had his wife hanged from the tree: the thought of allowing him to live when he might not love me was unbearable. Unthinkable. Why should he live when he had doomed me to die?

I had told d’Artagnan I was returning to my ancestral home in the provinces. Eventually, he would forget me too. He was young and hotheaded, and hotheads didn’t dwell on their formative years.

We made it as far as Chartres when I saw the Cathedral and demanded that we rest the horses. Where was I going? Was I truly chasing him or running away? But there was no escape from what pursued me.

There was a hole inside me, the flittermouse shaped hole, and no matter how much I spurred on my horse or how many bottles of wine I had downed, it would not close, it would not heal. My nightmares vacillated between the images of him dying in my arms and me dying in his.

I stormed into that Cathedral, all gothic arches and vitrages so bright that for a few moments I felt as if I was truly back on Olympus. The refracted light both illuminated and blinded me. I stood in front of the altar of the Aramisian God and I cursed him. Perhaps I had a hand in taking his life, and now he would take mine. So we would be even.

“I am glad you suffered,” I hissed at the crucifix.

Who had taken Aramis from me? Was it the Nazarene or the Ondine? Or was it my own Gods who had torn into my head and ripped out my heart? They had pursued me until the darkness inside me enveloped us both and made it impossible for him to stay with me.

I felt Grimaud at my side again, watching, waiting, watching.

“Don’t bring me back this time,” I said. “I don’t wish it.”

He shook his head, the little gargoyle.

“You listen to me, Grigori! I’m done. Do not bring me back!” Surely he understood. This was not like the other times when pretty boys left me bereft. This was _Aramis_.

He opened his mouth as if about to speak when I sensed the earth move beneath my feet.

“Did you feel that?” He shook his head. “Beneath us… What’s underneath?”

“The crypt, Kyrios.”

I laughed. The crypt. Of course, what else could it be. Perhaps the ossuary. I bet there was a chapel down there too, where priests could mourn their fallen brethren at close quarters. My stomach lurched into my throat.

“Aramis…”

“Kyrios, what are you about to do?”

I felt the same tremors of the earth before, they got stronger the closer I got to Snagov, like Ariadne’s thread guiding me to my beloved. Is this how he had always found me? He promised me he would always find me. The trembling grew stronger and radiated up my legs until I felt it in my hips. _Down there._

I looked about me for the winding staircase leading to the crypt. It was unimpeded so I started to descend, motioning for Grimaud to stay behind even as he vainly attempted to stop me. He let go of my arm and demonstratively crossed himself for my benefit.

Was it possible that in my aimlessness I had arrived at the very place in which he had taken refuge from me? I had long ago given up all thought of coincidence. The Gods had led me here - I was their instrument again. I knew my purpose. I unsheathed my dagger and stalked the dark, subterranean hallway with soundless footsteps intent on murder.

Come to me, flittermouse, so that I can lay you to rest in my arms.

There was a small chapel lit up by the dim light of a few candles at the very end of the corridor, next to the ossuary, as I had expected. I thought of each step I had taken down the apse in Snagov, where each moment carried me forward on wings of love that I had not known then, each step brought me closer to untold bliss. So too now, my steps carried me towards completion. We had come to the end of the canto.

_You do not love me anymore. You must die._

Aramis. He told me his name in Snagov and I thought I had never heard a more beautiful sound before.

He knelt before the altar, his head bowed, the slope of his shoulders already defeated. Did he know that Death stood a few paces off, watching him? If he had still loved me, he would have known. My unsheathed dagger burned into my hand like a brand yet I clasped it tighter.

His shoulders moved and a sigh escaped him. Where ever he was in his contemplations or prayers, it wasn’t a happy place. Well, if he was miserable then I could put an end to that, too. I lifted my arm, ready to strike at the back of his skull. All I had to do was take two steps and it would all be over, for both of us.

_Kill him, Athos, kill him._

No, no, Eris, you cannot have this too!

_I love him._

It did not matter that he no longer loved me, I loved him still. The Gods could take everything from me, but they couldn’t take _this_.

I staggered. He stirred. I fled.

I scampered back up the winding staircase, looking as if the Furies themselves were upon me, and it is entirely likely that they had been. Grimaud approached me quickly, his arms supporting my drunken stance. He took the unbloodied blade out of my hand and led me back the middle of the apse, where a few minutes ago I had felt the earth tremble beneath my feet.

That’s when I felt it. The fever. It rose up from the pit of my gut to engulf me. In the middle of the apse, the vitrages all pointed their accusatory rainbows at me, as I had accused Christ. I should have told Aramis when I had the chance. I should have trusted him, I should have loved him better. It was my fault, it was all my fault. I had lost him. Forever.

 _Forever_.

I stumbled, but Grimaud had caught me. The next thing I remembered was waking in a bed. He must have transported me to an inn in town. I shut my eyes and saw Aramis again. He was saying good-bye to me. How long had he been saying it without me hearing him?

But no. It wasn’t him. It was a doctor, speaking with Grimaud. Something about having to draw the fever out of my body. I wanted to laugh but felt as if I had swallowed my own tongue. As if a harpy had sat upon my abdomen and slowly eviscerated me with her claws. Oh, how Hera must laugh! Does she laugh, does she giggle with glee? Will she come to the Stygian shores to greet me and hand me coins for my journey across?

The spiritual descendant of Hippocrates held a sharp implement in his hand. It occurred to me that he had intended to lance my arm and bleed me. Again, I wanted to laugh, but all laughter died inside my throat. They kill people more than they save them, these healers, they really do.

I watched my own blood run into a small basin that he held under my arm.

 _Do you see this, you traitor?_ I thought towards Grimaud again. Like a statue, he remained unmoved.

“No,” I tried to speak, but sound failed me. The blood. _The blood._ No, stop that. Don’t take it. It isn’t yours. It doesn’t belong to you.

It’s his. It was always his.

Why? Why were they doing this to me? I did not want to think of him. But they took my blood. They took _his_ blood.

“You’ll feel better once your fever breaks, Monsieur,” I heard the doctor say.

I wanted to shut my eyes but I couldn’t tear them away from my own arm that bled freely into the basin. Red and thick and eternal. There was always so much of it. He couldn’t take enough. Even if he did, it did not matter. There was always more. Because we had all the time in the world, to bleed, to love, to die.

Tears stung my eyes.

When had we run out of time?

“No,” I moaned again. But they didn’t understand, they didn’t stop.

 _No._ Aramis. My love. My flittermouse.

I was running out of blood. I was running out of tears. I was running out of life.

Where was my angel? He was so close. So close. Why did he not come for me?

Why.

There are actual strings in your heart. And when they break, the pain is exquisite. It is like no other pain that you could ever have felt before or ever feel again. I felt them snapping one by one. By one. By one. Until it was over. Until the pain stopped. Until…

 

END OF VOLUME II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because this is Immortality AU, not Mortality AU, adventures will continue in [Volume III](http://archiveofourown.org/series/328037). We still have a lot of history to get through!
> 
> In the meantime, feel free to yell at us about your feels!


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